Words You Never Want to Hear

Baffling. Interesting. I've never seen anything like this before. Hmmmmmm.

As we sat in the doctor's office Monday evening, these were the words we were hearing. And you never want to be "interesting" to a doctor.

It all began on Monday morning when Elle woke up with strange markings on the palms of her hands. All the soft puffy parts on the palms of both hands were red and purple. They looked bruised, like she played too hard on the monkey bars (which she hadn't been on) I sent her to school with a note to the teacher to keep an eye on her hands. Her teacher (thankfully) called me around 1:30 to inform me that the palms looked no better and now red lines were running up her arm from the markings on the palms. I immediately called the doctor and got her in around 3:00.

"Interesting". "I've never seen an infection so symmetrical before." "Why would it be on both hands??"

Followed by a blood test. Followed by "Her white counts are too high, I want to admit her to the hospital to get her on antibiotics and figure this out." Followed by tears (those would be mine). Followed by a walk down the hall and into the hospital, into her room, into a gown with an IV into her arm. Just like that.

Now, I must add a side note here. We were in such good hands. Elle wasn't even in her gown yet and my sister arrived to whisk the boys away for a fun evening with their beloved girly cousins. A Pastor and good friend from our church arrived to pray with Elle. My parents helped with getting the boys to and from school. And my sister works just down the hall from where Elle stayed, so she was able to visit often. This is why we moved. To be closer to family, and...little did we know, so we didn't have to drive an hour to get to the hospital when necessary. The whole experience was easy, considering everything we had to do.

OK...back to Elle...she saw 3 specialists. One thinks it's bacterial, one thinks it's viral, and one doesn't know, so she does a skin biopsy on Elle's hand, taking skin to send away to Milwaukee for analysis. In the end, it seemed as though the IV antibiotics did their job as her palms went back to normal, the red streaks went away and she feels just fine. They still don't know what it was, but hopefully we get an answer soon.

Elle was a trooper! She never complained about the IV stuck in her arm, being attached to her bed, peeing in a "hat" in the toilet, or having her vitals taken all day long and all night. She did complain that she missed her brothers,and she missed her school. Did I mention yet that her teacher came up to visit her too??

In the end, we are glad she seems to be OK. We are still waiting on some results, but I am confident that whatever she had, it wasn't that big of a deal. In the end, I bet those orginal words will still ring true...Baffling...Interesting....I wonder what it was she had....