Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Cut Me, Mick!

Yesterday Chloe woke up with her eye swollen shut. We immediately looked at Connor suspiciously, trying to figure out how he managed to sneak into her room and punch her in the middle of the night without waking anyone up. We decided to let him off the hook, mainly because her eyeball wasn't red at all, only her lid. (Coincidentally, that's also why we let pinkeye off the hook.) After careful consideration we went ahead and sent her to school despite her newfound deformity. Our hope was that another kid would catch her strange eye disease and then we'd be able to ask that kid's parent what treatment was needed, after they went to the doctor.


By the end of the day, she looked much worse and despite our best efforts to avoid a co-pay we found ourselves making an appointment at the night clinic. We were told that she most likely had periocular edema. Whew! Glad to have a diagnosis. Hey wait- peri means "around," ocular means "eye," and edema means "swelling". . .did the doctor just tell me she has swelling around her eye? No shit. I already told you that when I called to make the appointment! When we pressed the doctor for a diagnosis that was worth the $25 we paid to keep our possibly sick child up past her bedtime, we were told that we should watch for flu-like symptoms that would indicate ocular cellulitis. In fact, the doctor had sent a patient to the hospital with that very affliction earlier in the day. We breathed a sigh of relief at that news, because now we had something interesting to tell people the next day. "It's probably periocular edema, but we're watching closely to make sure she doesn't develop ocular cellulitis. I'd hate to check her into the hospital this close to Christmas!" So we brought her home and put her to bed, secure in the knowledge that people would feel adequately sorry for us when they heard the story. Just in case seeing her hideously deformed face didn't do the trick on its own.


*Title courtesy of the Italian Stallion. No, not Rocky- that's just what I'm calling RJA from now on.

1 comment:

Stacey Greenberg said...

how is she?