Mother's Day Weekend

Well, I've had better, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We had plans to go camping, but that didn't quite pan out. Thursday morning Ben came into our room around 545 and said he had been up since 2am. He asked to stay home from school, and I told him he still had to go. I tried to get him to eat breakfast , but then he said he had a stomach ache. I didn't believe him, thought he was just trying to get out of school because he was tired. So I told him to try school and if it wasn't going well they could call me.

Well he gave it a go for about 5 minutes before he was in the nurses office and we got a phone call. We played the who is going to leave work game, and Kyle was the lucky winner. So, off he went to pick up Ben with strict instructions from me to make it as boring as possible for him. I still didn't believe him.

Those of you who know how this ends know that I am truly heading for a Mother of the Year award here. So when I got home and heard that he hadn't really eaten much, I kinda believed him. However, when he told me it hurt to walk and breath, and when the fever of 101.5 started I was a bit concerned. When I tried to palpate his lower right abdomen and he cried out in pain I was more than a bit concerned.

I called the nurse on line just to make sure I wasn't being an overreactive Mom. He agreed that Ben needed to be seen as he was suspicious of the same thing I was: appendicitis. Now, I already knew that our hospital (Deer River) was full because the orthopedic surgeon was in town doing all kinds of hips and knees. So I called to see if we were on deferment. We were but the nurses all assured me they would find a place for him if it really was appendicitis. So off we went to Deer River.

After doing an exam and running some labs, the ER doc was also suspicious of appendicitis. However, there really was no room at the inn and no surgeon available for consult. So, they transferred him to Grand Rapids, luckily they let me take him in our car. The surgeon (Lisa Owens, who was AMAZING with Ben) was waiting for us when we got there. However his pain was a bit more under control at that point and immediate surgery was mot necessary. So they put an IV in and watched him over night. However by morning his white cell counts had gone down, so did his fever, and he was feeling much better. We went home without a trip to the OR. The culprit: a virus which caused the lymph nodes around the appendix to swell, but the appendix itself was OK.

Ben has much improved, still has some instances of pain, but so far so good. He was doing so well yesterday that we decided to take a drive to Duluth to order a topper for Kyle's truck. He was still doing well after that, that we were able to go to Red Lobster for lunch and then go to the big lake for awhile. It was gorgeous by the lake, west wind, sunny, and 75 degrees. We also got a trip to Kohls and Menards in as well. Ended up being a nice day.

At Menards we got a ceiling fan for our front entry way to replace the orange dated light that was there. See below for before and after photos. My main reason for a ceiling fan is to circulate the warm air from the woodstove in the winter, but it will be nice in the summer as well. I was also able to get my garden weeded and put out some of my yard decorations.

So although it started out kind of crazy, it actually ended up being a good weekend. And nobody needed surgery!