Kids+Hospitals+Dinosaurs (Pt.2)

(Continued from November 13, 2010) ..... Well, I quickly left the home and headed for the hospital. Upon my arrival, my wife said the words that are still with us today. She said, “Our son keeps asking me to make the pain go away”. Wow, what a helpless situation for both of us.

We had no previous experience in the emergency room or hospital with our kids and here we suddenly were with no clue as to what to do. Our feelings of helplessness were exasperated by the doctors’ lack of being able to find anything wrong.

My wife badly needed a break; my son was peacefully sleeping; and I decided to stay in the room with him. He woke up a couple of times, but the pain medication was doing its job, thereby giving the doctors more time to figure out the cause of our son’s stomach pain.

My wife came back around midnight, so we stayed together in our son’s hospital room with her trying to sleep in the chair while I was stretched out on the floor. We were beginning to understand our friend’s words of wisdom from a few years before this evening!

At some point during the next morning, our son woke up and requested some water and a visit to the restroom. We quickly accommodated both requests. He seemed to be a little sluggish, but not in pain.

When he came out of the restroom, he announced that the pain was gone and that he would like to go home - with a side trip to McDonald’s on the way home!

We quickly called for the doctors; they ran some more tests; they announced that they still could not find anything; and, since our son was feeling fine, off to our home we went – after the requested stop at McDonald’s!! We were so happy to see him quickly return to health after almost 24 hours of scaring the wits out of us, that we would have been glad to stay all day at McDonald’s!!

We arrived home and he seemed just fine. He even wanted to go outside and play with his friends. WHAT? 24 hours earlier, he wanted my wife to make the pain stop and now he was just fine? Well, we certainly did not want to argue with the results, but we kept his playing to a minimum on that day, just to be sure.

During the next few years, in accordance with the doctor’s orders, we extra carefully monitored everything that he ate at our house and at the homes of other people. Since the massive pain came on suddenly, we were poised to return to the hospital at a moment’s notice. 

However, the return trip never came. Even though the doctors could find nothing wrong, the pain never returned and today he is a healthy 19-year-old with a stomach of steel and no issues!

(Please come back next week for the conclusion!)

Paul W. Reeves