Tanner to the ER

Yesterday was my usual day off. It is a day to run errands and clean house and of course do laundry. Well, in the middle of my chores Tanner starts complaining with his stomach hurting. He had complained off and on the day before so I was a little concerned. I ran to the grocery store while he stayed home laying on the couch. When I got home he was in serious pain. He is crying and holding his stomach. I start trying to figure out what to do. The first thing I did was pray for him and for wisdom to know what to do. It was only about 4:00 so I called the walk in clinic for advice. They suggested taking him to the ER because it could be his appendix and they would be able to run tests there. I call my husband at work to see what he thinks we should do. He usually is against the ER he thinks everything is NO big deal, where on the other hand I tend to panick.He suggested calling his pediatrician. I called his pediatrician to see what he thinks, he agreed with the walk-in clinic that we should take him to the ER. So, Randy comes home from work and we are off to the ER.

Tanner starts saying his usual saying “I wish Jesus would come back”. He longs for Jesus to come back and mentions it often. He especially mentions it when life gets hard. I encouraged him to trust Jesus to help him face whatever God allows into his life. He then says “I just want Jesus to come back”. That would be the best solution to all our problems, but God wants us to depend on Him to give us the courage and strength to deal with life here on earth until His return.

While at the ER. we have to wait in the waiting room for 4 hours before they call us back. That was a test of our patience.Tanner was so bored and frustrated. I was sympothetic for the other patients some which were worse than Tanner and I tried to explain to Tanner how they triage the patients and take them by the seriousness of their condition. I was also thinking what if they let his appendix burst before they call us back. We saw one mom run in carrying a lifeless baby screaming for someone to help. They took her straight back. I would gladly give her our spot. I prayed for the family. Later I got a chance to ask the mom how the baby was and let her know that I was praying for her. She said she was going to be fine. She said that the babies eyes had rolled back in her head and she passed out. That would be so frightening. Another family looked very upset as they took them into a private room. I prayed for them as well. I saw a friend bring her football playing son in and they rushed him back. I prayed for them. I talked to a young mom holding her 4 month old son, trying to get my courage up to ask to hold him, but I never did. Four hours is a long time to sit. I watched the people around me. I saw one lady that I thought should have been arrest for suspicion of using METH, she definetly had all the signs.

Finally we get called back to a room to wait some more. Tanner gets 6 tubes of blood drawn. That was an ordeal. He hates needles. I had to hold him down and tell him to quote scripture and pray through it. He makes it through. We praise him for being brave. Me and Randy both hate needles so we can’t say much. I almost didn’t marry Randy because we had to have a blood test before we could get married. I kicked and screamed and threw a fit, but I did it. I am much better now. Randy just passes out. Tanner has to drink some yucky lemonaide stuff with no sugar so it would line his stomach for a CT scan. He has to wait 2 hours after he drank the stuff for the CT. He also had to have an IV for die to be ran through for the CT. Here we go again with the needles. At almost 1:00 a.m. we get the CT done it showed that his appendix were fine, but that his bowels and lower intestines were inflamed. They had no idea why. They gave us the option of admitting him to see a Gastrologist or go home and get an appointment with a doctor. We chose to go home and wait to see a doctor. They said it could be as simple as a virus or as serious as Chromes Disease. So, if he gets better it was probably just a virus. He was not vomiting, diarrhea or fever or any usual signs of a virus, just serious stomach pain. So we will wait and see. He is feeling better today. He slept good last night.

It is always hard to know whether to go to the ER or not. If you wait it could be a ruptured appendix or you could go and spend lots of money and it be gas.  I guess it is better to be safe than sorry. I know that for whatever reason God led us there maybe it was to pray for the other families. Only God knows.