Half-Birthdays and Hospitals

Tuesday, March 25th, was Boy Pop's "half" birthday. Here in the Pop household, we feel these-types of occasions are a cause to celebrate. So we did. Complete with cupcakes (3, one for each of us) and Moon Sand. Note to self: Moon Sand sucks! And causes me to vacuum obsessively and pop the knuckles on my fingers. A lot. But my boy sure does like it. And cupcakes.

Also last Tuesday, Dr Pop awoke to a pain in his left foot. He managed the pain through the day, wondering what the Hell he did to hurt it. He was left with nothing. No reasonable explanation for a pain that was continuing to worsen as the day wore on.

Wednesday morning, at about 5AM, he was having a dream about being at the doctor, who was pushing on his foot, and the pain he felt was so intense that it woke him up.

I woke up at my usual time (6:30 or so) and saw that he was up. We talked for a bit, but he kept going back to how much his foot hurt. Me, being very practical and as usual, running late, asked him what he wanted to do. Did he want to call his dad (a retired physician)? Did he need to go to the emergency room? What?

He didn't know what he wanted at the time, but about half an hour later, he asked me to take him to the hospital. The pain was that bad.

*Side note. My husband is pretty good about handling pain and hates going to the doctor and the hospital. When he requests to go, it is bad.

So I took the Boy to school, called my manager, and drove Dr Pop to the ER. They took x-rays, made some diagnosing and head scratching sounds, gave him a ton of pain meds, fitted him for crutches, and prepared to send us on our merry way with orders to call an orthopedic doc that afternoon or the next day for a follow-up.

Yeah.

One minor little detail took over all else. Neither one of us had eaten anything all day. That was okay for me, but for a man who'd just taken a horse-sized dose of Vicodin and Ibuprofen? Recipe for illness. An hour and a half later, he finally felt able to go to the car. We got home about 5 hours after we left and Dr Pop went to sleep.

The ceiling tiles are painted in our local ER. I suppose to distract one from the reason they are there.

Fast forward to Thursday. We head to the ortho's office, x-ray copies in hand. The doc takes a look, decides it's either one thing or another, but both diagnosis appear the same way. The only real way to diagnose it is to give a cortisone injection right into the most painful part of the foot. The reaction to the shot will determine if it is diagnosis A or B. Lovely.

Well, through the remainder of the week and weekend, Dr Pop was still in a fair amount of pain. Therefore, we could probably go with diagnosis B, but we are still waiting on a follow-up appointment with the doc to confirm.

**Coming up! More tales of woe! From the Mrs. Pop vault of "oh crap, not again!"