Sooo, guess Jon’s recovery was going a bit too swimmingly: Over the last two days we’ve been getting a bit concerned over the bottom couple of inches of Jon’s surgery scar, which was getting very red and swelling a bit. Mind you, with someone’s busy, busy hands constantly trying to scratch at it we weren’t too surprised. Last night, though, after taking off the bandaid we were concerned enough to call the orthopedic resident at Sick Kids; the scar was more inflamed, dark red and weeping. He said if it was worse tomorrow, go to emergency, which we did this morning.
We figured emergency would be crowded and slow (as usual), so Midori and I peeled off to HMV to get her birthday prezzie (count ’em, two DVDs!); when we got back 45 minutes later we were surprised to find that Jon had already gone through triage and had been seen by the orthopedic resident.
Turns out it was an abscess along the stitches; quite common, and nothing to be too alarmed about (though they were glad we came in, as abscesses can get considerably worse). The resident had demonstrated how the abscess was filled with fluid—by swooping down on Jon and squeezing the abscess until it burst! Jon, not unreasonably, had replied “Ow! That hurt!” A prescription for antibiotics later and we were out within one hour, by far the quickest emergency visit we’ve ever had.
Ow! That hurt! – is it?
I have had half a dozen of these little buggers over these past years with the pain and pressure so great they have had to be cut and drained!
He gets no freezing – just pop!
And the kid only goes – Ow! That hurt!
Jon you are my hero – you always have been, but now I think your not human.
Man do I feel like a woose.
In my experience (and believe me my kids are regulars at the ER) you have to be bleeding, seizing, or not breathing to be seen in under an hour. You didn’t by any chance use stage makeup to give Jon a ‘blueish’ tinge hmmm?
Look, if I knew a secret way to get Jon looked at fast, I’d have used it a few weeks ago. I do know that the kid screaming at the top of his lungs (Children’s this summer) doesn’t work, though it may just get you processed through a little too quickly. I will vouch that if your kid has scarlet fever (but you don’t know what it is), if the nurse asks you if it’s an allergy, say yes. Whoosh, you’re attended to. (Children’s, 2000)
This time we had a call into the ortho resident, who had posted a note for the emergency reception nurse. So as soon as she looked him over, she got us to a room and paged him. No need for the regular staff to see him, he was expected.
And thank goodness for that (not having to see regular staff, that is)—it seems as though the first doctors you see in emerg are always worse than useless, especially if you have a kid lacking textbook symptoms. It’s not until you see a grizzled emergency-dep’t veteran, but preferably a specialist (neuro, ortho, whatever) that you start getting accurate diagnoses. Jon’s seen the emergency department of three different hospitals, and that seems to be the rule in all of them.
I totally agree on the first doctor bit. Tamo was seen by a rookie doc when he broke his wrist at Whistler and she casted it wrong!–put it in the “limp wrist” position rather than the “Queen waving” position so he had to have it re-done 2 days later—you’d think since he was at Whistler they’d be experts at bone breaks but I guess a rookie doc is a rookie doc even if the patient is “text book”…