I am worn out and wan, and WordPress just told me I failed to “prove my humanity” by correctly answering a math problem, which was 3 + 1 and I am just CERTAIN I got it right, but I have to live with the idea that I will never be able to achieve vindication on that.
This past Tuesday, Edward had a follow-up with the surgeon for his sinus surgery. The surgeon took one look at him from across the room (Edward’s eye area was still slightly puffy, and a little lump had appeared along the bridge of the nose the day before) and switched us to a different exam room, one with a giant up-the-nose camera system. He looked up Edward’s nose and ordered another CAT scan, which he said he’d be able to review the next day. The next day the office called to say we had another surgery and overnight hospital stay scheduled for Friday.
It was another abscess, in the sinus near the side of the bridge of his nose. The surgery was done partly by going up through the nose, and partly using a 1/4-inch incision on the side of the bridge of the nose (no stitch because they wanted it to drain). I don’t remember all the right terms, but the infection there had broken through the barrier between that sinus and the area where the eye is, so we had to have the whole ophthalmology-doctor experience over again, with her suitcase and the eye drops; she said the eye still looks unaffected but we have to go back and see her in a month.
We also had a visit from a doctor from Infectious Diseases, because ENT wants him on an entire additional month of antibiotics, and especially with his Crohn’s disease (but even without it), that’s something they like to take extra care with. She seemed very, very bored with us, which is an encouraging if annoying thing for a specialist to be. We will see her again in a week, at the follow-up with the ENT surgeon.
(Also, last time we were at the hospital it was freezing, and all the staff were wearing fleece with their scrubs, and I wore my cardigan the whole time and was cold at night even under the covers. So this time I was smart and wore jeans and brought a warmer cardigan. And our room was nearly 80 degrees and I slept with no covers on and was constantly slightly sweaty. One of the nurse assistants told me they are working on the broken air-conditioning room by room.)
I put a little rant-question on Twitter last night about how to administer an every-8-hours antibiotic (when the specialists emphasized it should REALLY BE every 8 hours), without having to wake the child or disrupt the school day, and I took the tweets back down because I realized I already know the answer to that, and it’s that you can’t, and you just have to figure out what you’re going to do: fudge the 8 hours or else DO IN FACT wake the child and/or disrupt the school day. There’s no weird schedule thing I’m missing where it does work.
The lovely thing about the timing of the surgery is that he has this long weekend to recover. The downside is that I am increasingly concerned as his Remicade infusion (for the Crohn’s disease) gets more and more overdue (he missed it when he first came down with the sinus infection near the first week of August), and I need to call his GI specialist to ask about that, and I also want to be reassured that ENT and Infectious Diseases really did consult with them about the antibiotics plan, but I can’t do that until Tuesday. Well, no, I could do that right this minute and talk to whoever is on call. But it is not that much of a thing to me. Like, I have already worked through the “You REALLY CAN call the person on call; that is WHY they are on call” thought process, and I DO KNOW I could call, but it REALLY ISN’T that urgent to me: he can’t have his Remicade infusion over the long weekend ANYWAY. I can wait until Tuesday to hear about when he CAN have it.
Also William is now at college, and also I have been working at a new part-time job for two very poorly-timed weeks, and those things are adding significantly to my worn-out wanness so I mention them here but will have to talk more about them later.