Whew!

I think you never really know fear until you have a child was a potentially serious health problem.  Granted, I’ve been very lucky with my little guy.  Cruz will be two on Saturday and has only had one real fever, and has never thrown up (I’m not counting spitup when he was a baby).  He’s a hearty, healthy little boy.  But this past Sunday, out of the blue he started limping.  At first my husband and I figured he had a splinter or a small piece of glass in his foot.  Of course, he wouldn’t sit still enough for me to get a good look.  So later, after a bath so I could figure out what was dirt and what might be a foreign object, I pushed around everywhere on his foot and could not elicit an “ouch”.  At this point I figure it’s not a splinter.  But what could it be?  Could he have broken a bone without my knowing it?  I’ve never broken a bone (your nose isn’t considered a bone, right?) so I know very little about it.  He is a rough and tumble little boy, but surely I’d know if he fell hard enough to break something, right?  I could tell by Monday morning a trip to the doctor was in order.  The doctor couldn’t get us in till Tuesday afternoon.  So I had the rest of Monday and Tuesday morning to search the internet and work up a good, old fashioned worry! 

The internet is a wonderful thing.  But someone like me having access to all the information is just a recipe for stress.  Just googling “2 year old with sudden limp” brought up all kinds of horrible possibilities.  After weeding through all the veterinary issues (apparently 2 year old dogs with limps are more common than two year old little boys with limps) I found information on leukemia, tumors, neurological issues, septic arthritis….etc.  Now I was hoping for a broken bone!  I would just have to wait for the doctor’s report…it would be a looooong 24 hours.  If you’ve never seen a toddler limp, trust me, it’s heart breaking.  They don’t know how to “fake it”.  He reminded me of Tiny Tim in “A Christmas Carol”.  I could hardly watch him try to walk without tearing up.

When we went to the doctor on Tuesday, they had Cruz walk down the hall and seemed genuinely surprised that, in fact, he had a significant limp,  He wouldn’t bear all his weight on his left leg, he was walking on his tip toes and his foot was turning in.  “X-rays”, thats what they say they need.  “That should be no problem”, I reply sarcastically.  It took two nurses and me to hold him down and hold him still for two different views of his feet, legs and hips.  He started sweating from crying and squirming.  Then they say they need to draw blood.  Again two nurses try to help me hold him down…but he gets one of his hands loose and jerks the needle out of his arm…in the process he blows a vein.  Now he’s pouring sweat and they have to stick him again.  So, we get a third nurse to hold him down (did I mention he’s freakishly strong?).  He’s screaming crying, begging me to take him “bye-bye” and my heart is breaking that my baby is hurting even though I know its for his own good.  Finally they get the blood they need and even though the pain is over, he’s so upset he can’t get his breath and continues to cry for the 30 minutes we wait for the x-rays to develop and preliminary blood work to come back.

The results…doctors “think” it’s transient synovitis.  I’m familiar with this from my google internet search. That’s good news because it means it’ll go away on its own and it’s not considered serious.  Cruz had a virus a few weeks before and the doctor says that’s indicative of how transient synovitis works.  The child gets a virus, then seemingly gets better but actually the virus just moves to a joint, usually the hip joint.  However, she says, it could be septic arthritis.  That’s bad…very bad.  The two conditions have the same symptoms, but septic arthritis means emergency surgery and hospitalization for IV antibiotics.  I also remember from my google search that the words “potentially fatal” were associated with septic arthritis.  The doctor assures me that it is most likely transient synovitis, but to rule out septic arthritis, they’ll send out a blood sample for further testing and she’ll call me in the morning.  In the morning?????  Seriously, I have at least 18 more hours to worry about this???  Great!

After another sleepless night, this one purposefully without another google search, the nurse finally calls to say the results are good.  It looks like it is, in fact, the lesser of the two evils.  He should stop limping in a few days…if not, bring him back in.

So I’m more calm now…a little.  Although I guess I’ll never be totally without worry again.  That started the day he was born…strike that…it was the day I found out I was pregnant, only then I was worrying about miscarriage, birth defects, genetic abnormalities, etc.  You don’t realize how “light” being childless and worry-free is until it’s gone.  Although I wouldn’t go back to that worry-free state if you paid me!  This quote by Elizabeth Stone says it all, “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.“  As a relatively new mom, that exactly sums it up in my opinion.