Monday, June 01, 2009

total WTF moment for the medical professionals

Today, I spent a few hours in the ER with Hermes. He was presenting with symptoms that were tet book appendicitis. The surgeon who was gonna make the call on remiving it before or after they had him admitted to an actual room got waylaid on the way to us. In the 30 minutes that passed, Hermes started to hurt less- generally not something that happens unless the appendix goes boom, which is bad. While we were waiting to see if he got worse again, the nurse decided to run a throat culture, as she has heard that in really rare cases, savagely bad cases of Strep can present with appendicitis like symptoms, and no sore throat whatsoever.
Yep, the nurses random idea proved to be correct, unless Hermes is the once in a million lifetime cases of someone having strep and having the appendix rupture in the time that they are waiting to be seen further.
We have to monitor him closely for the next day for any more appendix-y symptoms, monitor for Strep complications, and keep him home for TWO days instead of one, as this is a massive fuck-all case of Strep from DOOM!!!

Mom, I would have called you if he actually went under the knife- I didn't want to worry you needlessly on your vacation, so unless they were putting him under, I wasn't gonna call.

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