On our drive home from Utah, Soren's ear started to bother him. We thought it was just the altitude changing or a cold coming on. It went away when we got home and we thought nothing of it. A few days later his ear started to fill up and really hurt again. At 6 pm I got him some Tylenol and we still didn't think much of it. At 10 pm the pain was really getting to him and we made a few calls to find some stronger pain meds. Soren decided he would be okay and I went to bed.
At 3 am he wakes me up in a panic telling me that he has been up all night pacing because the pain was so bad. He was at his wits end and wanted to know who we could call or what we should do. I didn't know what to do so we called the ER and the receptionist told me he should come in if the pain was that bad. I stayed home with the kids and sent Soren to the hospital, which is only about 5 minutes from our house. I went back to bed and thought he would be good as new when I heard from him next. Well at around 6:30 he calls me and tells me that they haven't done anything for him at the ER and that he is still at a level 10 of pain. They had ordered him a cat scan and given him a shot of some kind, but nothing was helping. (I later found out they had given him Atavan (sp) to calm him down because he was so worked up in the waiting room). He told me he would call me back.
I had a chiropractor appointment at 9 and so I left the kids with a babysitter and went to that. On the way home I called Soren again, still expecting him to have been fixed up, and he was still NOT fixed up. He said they had admitted him and he was going to have to stay. The pain was still terrible and had not changed. I was LIVID. Was I crazy to think that if he went to the ER by himself with a pain problem that they would fix him up and help him???? I thought I was sending him to the best place we could have found for taking care of things and fixing them. Now I see that I really needed to be there to be his mediator and get things moving.
Needless to say I drove straight to the hospital and marched up to his room. When I got there the nurse was talking with him and Soren was literally in tears. I have NEVER seen him in any kind of pain even close to that. I laid into the nurse and let her have it. What the h*ll is going on here and why is he still in so much pain????? I still don't understand why they didn't put him out of his misery sooner except that they are likely used to people being in pain and it doesn't phase them. My Mom met me there and the Bishop and another man came to give Soren a blessing.
They finally gave him one of the strongest drugs they had and within about 20 minutes of me arriving the pain started to lessen. His ear drum also ruptured which probably helped the most because it released all of the pressure causing the pain. We saw two doctors and one said he could have ruptured the ear drum himself to relieve the pain. I thought, "Where the h*ll were you a few hours ago??" Soren has a high tolerance for pain and pain meds so the lower dosage drugs they had tried didn't touch the pain. Too bad I wasn't there to tell them that beforehand. Likely they wondered where I was too. The drug that ended up working was the strength that they only send home with dying cancer patients.
Anyway it turned out to have been an acute ear infection. Soren had to stay overnight in the hospital for monitoring and I brought the kids up to visit him. We ate pudding and Soren acted wacky from his drugs. He is a funny person on drugs. Thankfully the infection healed up in a few weeks and although his ear still fills up sometimes, things are mostly back to normal for him.
This was definitely a list of first for us: first time for Soren to be in the hospital, first time I've seen him in that kind of pain and first time dealing with this urgent of an emergency. Lets hope those are all lasts as well.
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