Unplanned Trip

One of the kids bumped something on the computer, which shut off my internet. Steve called a good friend last night and they figured out the problem, so now I'm back online.
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When I say there is never a dull moment around here, I'm serious. The latest involves a phone call I received yesterday concerning Zeke. It's a long story. 

A few months ago, Zeke had a pretty serious infection on his knee. His knee seemed to have a fluid buildup which then turned red and was warm to the touch. That said infection to me, so I took him into the clinic right away. They gave him some high powered medication at the clinic and then ran some cultures. In the meantime, we gave him both oral and topical medications until we knew exactly what we were dealing with. Everything showed that the infections were limited to the skin and just below the skin. When the results of the cultures came back, they showed that Zeke had two different infections in his knee, a staph infection and a strep infection. I had no idea that strep could infect a knee but they said that it can settle almost anywhere, it's just that the throat is most common. Four weeks, two high powered doses of medication,  two visits to the orthopedic doctor in Sioux Falls and two visits to the local pediatritian later, it seemed we had the infection under control and it hadn't progressed into his surgery site inside his knee.
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A few weeks later, I noticed that Zeke's ankle was swelling. It appeared to have an enormous amount of fluid built up right under the skin. I wasn't sure if it was the return of the infection in a different area, if his braces were rubbing incorrectly on his ankle or if we were dealing with something completely different. So I made an appointment and took him back to his orthopedic team in Sioux Falls. The baby saw another doctor at the same clinic for her helmet so I just made the appointments back-to-back. After the doctor made a compelete examination of the ankle, she thought that the swelling was because of the way Zeke's braces were containing his foot. They made some changes to Zeke's braces to see if that would help decrease the ankle swelling, ordered X-rays, and then had us come back a week later to check his ankle. Unless it got worse - then we were to come back in right away.
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I took Zeke to our local clinic for the X-rays. Meanwhile, the adaptions to the braces seemed to be doing the trick for his ankle. The swelling went down and I ceased to be concerned about it. The X-Rays were sent to Zeke's primary pediatrician, his orthopedic doctor in Sioux Falls and his orthopedic doctor in St Paul.
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Yesterday,  I received a call from Gillette Children's Hospital in St Paul requesting an MRI and a consultation with Zeke. Apparently, when they looked at the X-Rays, they noticed something on his foot/toe. I had noticed it too but with everything else going on, wasn't overly concerned about it. I guess they are.
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So this morning, I take Zeke into his pediatrician at 9:20am to get a generic physical done and have them sign off on the MRI, then the baby has a visit at 10am, I'm headed work for Dawnna at the produce stand at 11am until 6pm and then head out of town with Zeke. It's a four hour drive and I'm hoping to be there by 10pm. To save money, we'll be staying with my sister-in-law for the night and then we are scheduled to be at the hospital at 7am.  They'll check us in and get Zeke sedated for the procedure. From past experience, they'll let him pick out a smell he likes and put it on the mask. Once the mask is on, he drifts off to sleep really quickly. I'll stay with him until that point. Then they start an IV and take him to the MRI. He's scheduled to go into the machine at 8am and it should take about an hour. Then we wait for him to wake up. Again from previous experience, he takes a long time to wake up. We're scheduled to meet with the orthopedic surgeon at 11am. After that, who knows. It depends on what she has to tell us but I'm planning on heading back home that afternoon/evening.
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