Friday morning dawned and it was the 3rd day AM had been sick. It followed two previous nights where AM had crawled into bed with us (multiple times) burning up with fever. I didn't think much of it because unless the fever was at a high point she never acted like she was sick. Later that afternoon I made the comment to a few friends that I wasn't taking her to a doctor unless stuff was oozing out of her. In the past I've spent probably at least a $100-$200 taking kids to the doctor just to have them tell me it's just a virus or she perfectly healthy, just fussy. So no more doctor visits. Ever. Unless it's beyond obvious that they needed to go.
So, a few hours later I noticed some green snot like liquid oozing out of her tear duct. Hmmm. Haven't seen that one before. It had happened earlier that day, but I thought she had just rubbed snot around during her nap and it went up near her eye. So on my way to the temple I call my sister. I'm planning on taking AM to urgent care the next day, but she has three kids of her own so chances are if this a is a wierd, yet normal thing to happen, she may have experienced it already.
I call her, and no, she's never heard of it. She says, hang on a minute and I'll call David (my BIL) who is a dentist. Since the mouth is in the head region he knows something about the ins and outs of the area. She calls him and he (my BIL) calls me back while I'm in the changing room of the temple. Now I'm supposed to turn my phone off when in the dressing room. Instead I'm having a whispered conversation about green snot and fevers. I'm answering questions like "Are her eyes bulging?" "no" and "Is she in a lot of pain?" "no." It was a guard weekend (he belongs to the Utah National Guard) and he had talked to his buddy who is in the guard with him and happens to be a pediatrician. So I give him DA's cell number so he can give the ped's number to him, frantically call DA to describe all of AM's symptoms and duration, and hurry and finish changing and race up to try and catch the last session at the temple.
I get out of the temple at 10:30pm and call DA. The pediatrician had just left the house. When DA was talking to him (the doctor) he kept insisting that based on the snot coming from the tear duct she needed to be seen tonight and that he would stop by on the way home from guard and see her. Turns out she had so much infection and snot built up in her sinus area that pus was building up under her eyes (hence the leakage). The Dr. was worried about it going behind her eyes and getting into the muscle and causing lots of problems. I found myself sitting in Walgreens pharmacy until 11:30pm waiting for an antibiotic because the Dr. wanted her on it immediately. The doctor had left his cell number with the instructions that we call him if anything changes during the night.
She's been totally fine since then. No more green leakage, and the puffiness that I noticed (once I knew what I was supposed to be looking for) in her sinus area and under her eyes is gone. The Dr. called and checked on her again Saturday afternoon.
I appreciate my BIL recognizing that something was really wrong and I appreciate the caring and concern of this doctor. Even more so since AM isn't even his patient. He could have just told us to take her to instacare instead of coming by our house when I'm sure all he wanted to do was go home. If I already didn't have a pediatrician that I already loved I would totally switch to him in a heartbeat.
