Sweety, Our Frequent Hospital Flyer

-->Sweety is certainly starting to develop his own opinions about everything! Which is a good thing, right? We're glad to see him growing up so beautifully and taking an interest in the world around him. A highlight for him this year was playing with Smarty at his preschool a few times a week, during wiggle time before Smarty's class started. Sweety will be starting preschool this fall, so I'm glad we've been able to interact with the staff and children ahead of time.
Sweety has an apparent love of hospitals and keeps dragging us back every few weeks! Last spring we were rather distressed as his tonsils had grown so large, they were "kissing" according to his ENT. Sweety was having trouble swallowing his food and experiencing Sleep Apnea at night. When allergies hit and stuffed him up, he sounded like he was about to have an asthma attack at any moment.
In March we scheduled surgery to remove his tonsils, adenoids, and place yet another set of tubes in his ears; but the morning of the surgery--after we had set up babysitting, arranged schedules, and forced Sweety to fast--the anesthesiologist decided we were too close to his last episode of Croup and canceled the operation! I always prefer to be 'better safe than sorry,' but it was a tad disappointing.

We rescheduled and ended up spending the night (a routine precaution due to Sweety's age) and even though it was finals week for me, all went well. The picture above is a cute photo Amy took of worn-out Sweety in his hospital bed.

Then the day before Mother's Day, our family was enjoying a lovely evening bike-ride, when we had a pretty impressive accident. The bike trailer overturned. Thanks to God Smarty was just fine. Unfortunately Sweety was ejected, landed on his face, and scraped through the rocks and tree roots.

He was pretty banged up and a divot of flesh was carved out of his nose, so off we went to the E.R. where they called in a plastic surgeon to operate. He 'undercut' up into Sweety's forehead and down into his cheek. Then he pulled the sections of flesh together across his nose. Ben estimates he put about 30 stiches in Sweety's face (20 or so underneath and 10 or so on top).
The hole ended up pulling apart a little bit, and for a while the surgeon was considering more surgery. But eventually he decided there was not enough of a hole to cause his eyebrow to droop or anything like that, so we decided to leave it. He will retain a scar, but scars are cool, right?
We were so blessed with help that day. I'm so thankful to all the angels who dropped everything to rush to our aide. We're blessed to be surrounded by supportive family, friends, and strangers. And thanks to my Heavenly Father for sustaining my little family through a crazy and emotional weekend!
Our next hospital adventure didn't occur until June 28th, the evening before Ben and I were scheduled to leave on a pioneer trek for four days.

Sweety was on the front porch, walking into the house, when he must have tripped and slammed his head squarely on the corner of the door jam. I met up with him as he was walking into the living room in tears, with blood gushing from his head.

Off we went to the hospital again. Where the doctor decided to glue it closed instead of stitching it. Unfortunately the wound was not cleaned well enough, because when Ben and I returned, Sweety looked like this:
His forehead was swollen with infection and we could see green stuff under the glue. A few hours later (after we had already scheduled an apt to clean him up) Sweety tripped and smacked into the dryer, which made the wound pop open and gush infection and blood. It was just lovely. Our good 'ole pediatrician's office cleaned him thoroughly and steri-stripped him as it was too late to stitch at that point.

I am happy to report that except for a minor bout with pink-eye over the holiday weekend, we have not been back to the hospital since. In even better news, his check-up with the endocrinologist last week was awesome!!! Click here to read about his IGF hormone diagnoses, or click here for his history with this issue. He gained just enough height and weight to maintain his growth curve from last January!!!!

The endo says as long as his blood work and X-rays (which I'm shamelessly procrastinating) come back normal, we can WAIT A WHOLE YEAR before we have to do tests again!!!!! So get to knocking on wood for us people, 'cuz that would absolutely rock!