Oh, no . . . my tooth

A few weeks ago I let my kids go to play at the park. My little boy, Tommy was going down the slide when he attempted to turn around to see his sister. Somehow, he hit his mouth on the side of the sled and knocked out his front tooth.

Luckily, I had given Kaesi, my 15-year-old daughter, the extra cell phone for emergencies. She called me and told me Tommy had an accident and I could hear him crying in the background. I immediately drove to the park and all three of them were waiting on the sidewalk.

Tommy was still crying and I first noticed the blood all over his face. Then, I saw the empty space where his tooth used to be.

Me - His tooth is knocked out!
Kaesi - I know. I'm sorry.
Me - It's okay. Do you have the tooth? Where is it?
Kaesi - I don't know. In the sand? (I followed her to the slide.)
Me - We have to find it. You always have to get the tooth.

Kaesi was looking under the slide and I walked to the end with Tommy in tote. By pure dumb luck, I only had to look for that tooth for about 3 seconds when I saw it. There it lay in the sand, the entire tooth. I grabbed it and we ran back to the car. I put Tommy in his car seat, jumped in and headed straight for the dentist office, about half a mile away.

I knew they would be closed, but I was hoping that I was wrong. I was right, so I called the phone number on the door. The answering machine had the message I was hoping for: an emergency after hours phone number. I called it. The dentist answered and I told him what happened. He asked me to look at the remaining teeth in his mouth.

Poor Tommy, his mouth was all bloody. His other teeth looked fine, but I could see that his gum was tore all the way up to his lip line. The dentist explained that because Tommy is 3-years-old, he probably has permanent tooth buds forming and re-inserting the baby tooth risked damaging that bud. He said it would be best to let the tooth fairy come and to take Tommy into see him at 6am the next morning. I agreed. What else could I do?

I held up Tommy's tooth and I said to him, "Look, bud."

Tommy stared at the tooth for a few seconds, and then unexpectedly declared, "Oh, no . . . my tooth." He said it so matter-of-fact, I couldn't help but laugh.

The girls were crying more than Tommy. They were sobbing. Tommy watched them for a minute, then said to them, "Don't cry. I'm okay. See? I'm a tough guy." That made them wail. It made me laugh more and both the girls got mad at me. "It's not funny, Mom."

It wasn't funny, but it couldn't be undone either, so there was no point in me being angry or them getting so upset about it. For rest of the night, every time Tommy smiled, both of the them would start crying again.

A Good Laugh at the Doctor's Office

We went to the neurologist for Jerome last Monday. My first impression of the doctor was that he wasn't listening and we would have to go see a different neurologist. I was thinking about the number of months it would take to see a different neurologist, since most of them are in our area are booked out 3-4 months.

He fired off question after question at Jerome. Jerome would start to answer him and the doctor would cut off him and fire off the next question. He completely ignored me when I tried to help Jerome with his answers. The neurologist was confusing him and Jerome wasn't having one of his better days to start with.

Finally, I interrupted and I said to the neurologist, "I brought in his entire medical history. It's that stack of papers right there. It has his CT scan, MRI, and blood test from when he went to the emergency room on May 1st."

The doctor started flipping through the papers. "Finally, I got his attention," I thought to myself.
Neurologist -These are the results from a couple of weeks ago?
Me - Yes. The CT scan showed something wrong with the white matter and the MRI came back as normal.
Neurologist - That is unusual. I don't think this MRI was read correctly. It doesn't make sense for the CT scan to be so grossly abnormal and the MRI to be normal. I will order another MRI.
Me - Did you notice on his blood work also, that his lymphocyte count is only 4%?
Neurologist - No. Hmm. There is something very wrong here. Let me schedule some tests and we can get to the bottom of this.

The doctor left the room and a minute later he returned.

Neurologist - Does his muscles go like this sometimes? (He made a jerking movement with his arms to demonstrate.)
Me - Yeah. Just like that.
Neurologist -Oh, my God. (He turned and left the room again.)

Jerome and I looked at each other and we both burst up laughing.

Jerome - I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I have never heard a doctor say that before.
Me - (still laughing) Me neither. That was awesome. I like this guy.

The nurse came in a moment later with a sheet that had 7 appointments on it. She explained that all of these tests were critical and if he couldn't make any of the appointments to call the numbers provided and reschedule. She also told us that the doctor wanted to bring in a specialist from the University of Utah for consult on this case.

We meet with the neurologist again in about a month. Nobody in that office ever told us what the neurologist thinks may be wrong with Jerome. We are still wondering what the doctor meant when he exclaimed, "Oh, my God." We are still laughing about it also. Thanks, Doc, for the laugh and for listening.

A day in the ER

I haven't posted for a long time. I feel like I have been so busy over the last few weeks, but when I think back to what I have done, it doesn't seem like much. I think I just feel pulled in every direction and it overwhelms me. I have been putting in a lot of hours at work. We are moving in a couple of weeks also, so I have been packing and cleaning. My husband. Jerome, has been to see several doctors. A little over a week ago, he called me home from work. I knew it was serious because he never asks me to leave work.

When I got home his skin was gray and he was sweating profusely. He walked with a slight limp. I called his family doctor and made an appointment for that afternoon. With in half an hour, I was on the phone with 911 and asking for an ambulance. Jerome is a big guy, 6' tall and 240 pounds and I knew he needed to get to a hospital but I am only 5'4" and 125 pounds. I couldn't move him at all.

I had helped him get to the couch and when he sat down his whole body seemed to freeze. I could tell that the muscles in his hands were cramped by the way they were twisted. He was crying and kept saying his head felt like it was going to explode. He said his whole body was in severe pain and felt numb. His head and face were numb. His whole body started to twitch and convulse, but not like a seizure. I called 911 and I actually got an answering machine at first! It only took about 30 seconds for the operator to come on, but I was sitting there thinking, "You have got to be kidding! I have heard of things like this, but I never thought it was real."

I thought Jerome might be having a stroke or something. When the paramedics got there, they said that they were called in for chest pain. (I never said chest pain to the 911 operator.) Jerome's heart rate was over at 127. They told him to calm down and asked me if he was a hyperventilated. I told them no and he wasn't hyperventilating when I called 911. He had been barely breathing and the operator was yelling at me because I couldn't tell by looking at him if he was breathing when he lost consciousness. His chest wasn't moving and his mouth was turning blue. I really think he did stop breathing for a few seconds. I shook him and he took a deep gasp like you would expect from someone coming up from under water for a long time. They took him to the ER.

I stayed at the house long enough to make arrangements for someone to pick up the girls from school and then I headed to the hospital. When I got there he was sleeping. They drew blood and did a CT scan on his head. About half an hour after he got the CT scan, the doctor came in and said they were sending him in for an MRI because they CT scan showed white matter hypoattenuation of the bilateral cerebral hemispheres. At the time I had no clue what that meant. I now know that it could be an indicator of Multiple Sclerosis. The MRI showed no lesions on the brain, so the doctor said Jerome didn't have MS. They sent Jerome home even though he was in so much pain that he could barely move. I thought that they assumed that Jerome was faking or something. His own doctor often seems unconcerned with the symptoms that Jerome or I describe to him and I have felt like he thinks Jerome is a headcase for a while now.

The discharge papers that they sent us home with stated that Jerome had suffered from Hyperventilation Syndrome and Chonic Pain. They did not prescribe any thing for pain. That didn't matter because Jerome hates the way that pain meds make him feel. Even though they do provide relief for him, they knock him out and make him light-headed.

The ER doctor called Jerome the next day and told him that he made arrangements for Jerome to see a rheumatologist as soon as possible. The appointment was in a few days. He also wanted to make sure that Jerome saw a neurologist as soon as possible.

I sent Jerome to see his family doctor for a follow up and the doctor had made him two packets that contained Jeromes entire medical history for the past 3-4 years. One was for the neurologist and one was for the rheumatologist. He told Jerome that the CT scan on his head was a dramatic difference from the one that he had recieved a year ago.

I looked through the papers and I had been right all along. His doctor did think that Jerome was faking his symptoms. He even stated it in his notes. That explains why he prescribed Jerome with anti-depression medication. Even the ER doctor had put in one of his differential diagnoses as psychatric etiology.

We went to the rheumatologist on Friday and left him scratching his head. He looked over all of the paper work that I gave him. He doesn't agree with the ER doctors diagnosis of hyperventialtion. He kept talking about Jerome's CBC results. Every thing he was saying was going over my head. He used the term auto-immune disease a lot. I knew what that was due to my hours of online research. I have suspected and autoimmune disease for a long time, but when I told Jerome's regular doctor of my suspision and the symptoms that made me think that might be the problem, he blew me off and just said I was describing many of the symptoms of depression. I told him I didn't think that his physical symptoms were related to depression. He just said he would see Jerome again in a few weeks and then he never bothered to look into it.

When I got home I immediately looked at Jerome's blood work lab results and looked for any numbers that were not in the normal range. The one that caught my eye was the lymphocyte count. The range that was considered normal on the form was 24-44% and Jerome's was only 4%. For his lymphocyte absolute was 0.4 L with the normal range being 1.2-3.4 L. His monocyte was at 2% with the normal range being 0-12% and his monocyte absolute was at 0.2 with the normal range being 0.2-0.9. We are going to see the neurologist tomorrow. I hope he has some answers for us.

If any is a specialist that would be willing to look at Jerome's case and give us an idea of what is wrong with him, it would be greatly appreciated.