Sunday, May 11, 2008

Trip to the ER? Check.

Last night was fairly interesting as we had to take Matthew to the ER. Being a first time dad I am trying to be self-aware and not over-react to things as they come up as they are inevitably all new to me. So when Matthew's eye started to leak ooze and swell up exponentially over a couple of hours yesterday, I tried to think logically and do some research on the interwebs to figure out the best course of action. A bunch of minor things came up indicating a blocked tear duct, post-birth reaction to the Erythromycin given at birth, and the like. In addition to the 'not-so-serious' problems were things like viral infection, bacterial infection, and permanent damage to the eye. In the end we called Nana and Poppa Joe over to watch Sarah while we took the little man to the ER. Not exactly what Erin had in mind for her first mother's day. We initially went to the hospital to where he was born, but it turns out that they have no clinic there and would only take him if he needed to be hospitalized. Fortunately they were super nice and sent down a pediatrician to look at him and decided that it was not serious enough to admit him and gave us directions to the other campus. We got to the real ER a few minutes later and again got lucky in that it was a Saturday night and they were not too busy. After 45 minutes or so, they had taken a bunch of cultures for testing and suggested it was probably just conjunctivitis. We got some antibiotics for him and headed home. This morning his eye looks so much better and despite potentially over-reacting I think we made the right move in not waiting for it to get worse before deciding to take action. Happy mothers' day, wife (and Mimi and Nana)!