Sick Baby

When your child is sick, your whole world stops. 

Dayr almost two-months-old, post-op

That's what happened to us two weeks ago.

During a routine diaper change I noticecd a red lump on my Dayr's testicle. Maybe for the average Joe and Jane parent this wouldn't be a big deal but with Dayr's groin history (he had an inguinal hernia repaired when he was not even two months old) it was a Giant. Parent. Bummer.

I was anxious at home that night by myself; I couldn't wait for my husband to get home and share my fear. It's not the sort of thing you want to be alone with.

He got home, I told him, we speculated. His hernia ruptured? His repair failed? Something is the matter with his testicles? Our minds went crazy.



Both of our moms are nurses, they were our next call. A boil, an ingrown hair (on an infant?), his hernia. All of these were guesses added to the list.

Off to the doctor we went. We took him to his regular pediatrician, the same man that was MY pediatrician when I was a baby! He's been around for many years and, so I thought, seen it all. Surely he would know what this was. He had no clue. He so intensely had no clue that he asked his colleague (the doctor who delivered me when I was BORN) to take a look. No ideas. In all their years of combined pediatric practice neither of them had seen anything like this.

That was not comforting.


Waiting at the pediatrician's office. He doesn't look sick at all!

With concerned eyes the doctor told me he'd get us in to see a Urologist tat same day. Not a pediatric urologist, those only practice at least 3 hours away, just a run-of-the-mill urologist.

Also not comforting.

We made special arrangements to have the other two kids watched by my mom while I took Dayr to the Urologist and dropped Bob offf at work. Juggling one car can be such a delight sometimes!

The only kid in the Urologist's office, he was glad to break-in the toys.



Waiting for the Urologist, clearly having a terrible time [NOT]

We waited and waited, and then waited some more. Finally we saw the Urologist (my mom called him quick, Bob's mom called him thorough) who said...

It is nothing more than Folliculitis, more commonly known as an inflamed hair follicle (a condition very rarely seen in infants and children with no hair "down there").

WHAT?!

I felt so silly. He prescribed Dayr an antibiotic (the redness aparently made him believe it was an infected hair folicle) and we were on our way.

Two weeks followed and no changes (good or bad) but then tonight...

His strange, red, swollen follicle oozed!

When Bob got home and I told him the good news he said "I bet you liked that!" Yes, true I was happy to see some improvements, but I also love popping zits, peeling skin, and other bodily oddities (say that five times fast!) so I was double thrilled!

Now we wait, and make sure his nethers return to their previously uninfected non-inflamed state.

During the time when we had no idea what was going on, I found myself thinking about other parents with suffering children, in all of their varying degrees of sickness and health. How fortunate we are to have access to doctors who can tell us what's wrong. How lucky I am to have a husband who is not only involved in the care of our children but also very deeply emotionally concerned with their well-being. The list of goods to realize in the face of a health scare goes on and on.

One unique thing I noticed through all of this, was Dayr's reaction to being away from Taylen. Since they were nine-days-old they haven't spent a day apart. (Dayr initially spent nine days in the NICU while Taylen was home with mom and dad after birth). We even brought Taylen to the Hospital for an overnight visit during Dayr's hernia repair at two months old, despite his perfect health.

During the past two weeks when Dayr noticed his brother was gone, he looked for him. If there was something fun to explore, he called out to him. Our twins are surely connected. The roots of their love run deep. A level that no amount of parenting, reading, researching or trying can help me understand. They've got a bond we can't disrupt and through everything that happened they both remembered one thing: I love my brother.

... and that is worth remembering.