puffy

Daniel's eyes have been weird lately, where "weird"= A Little Puffy With A Tinge Or Dark Circle But Nothing Gross Or Particularly Unsightly.

So I took him to the doctor, one who on that day, was the ONLY doctor available.

His diagnosis was an ear infection, throat infection, conjunctivitis and cellulitis, the latter being a potentially blinding situation, so I had this internal motherly meltdown because Serious Shit, y'all, then the doctor said something to the tune of "let's wallop Daniel's infections and eyeball futz with some pills the size of my foot.".

And that kind of straightened me out because Dude makes a living out of prescribing. I mean, you NEVER leave his rooms withoot (withoot? Is a typo worth saving!) a script for antibiotics, and that's a bona fida absolute. Also, he is, in my opinion, a crappy diagnostician, but one purported by his desk clerk to be fabulous at spotting a Foreign Object if one existed.

Which one did not.

So I told Prescribing Doctor I wasn't sure about his advice because, hello, NEVER NOT PRESCRIBING, and apart from the one big bulgy eye, my kid was fine, and then I dramatically windmilled my arm around so my pointing finger was aimed at Daniel, who was proving my argument by tooling about the office, merrily playing with toys and generally being SO not unwell. That, I explained, plus the non existent temperature suggests to me that maybe we should hold off on the dramatic measures.

But what do I know, I'm not a doctor! (because I may be a smartass, but I also know how to play the room)

But PD agreed with me (my inner dialog: Like, what? So why go with the Diagnosis Of Doom as a first alternative if there was an option of "He's fine"?) and said IF he gets worse, THEN fill the script. Inner Dialog was still all muttering "well no SHIT, you idiot. That's what a SENSIBLE doctor would have told me to do in the FIRST place", but I thanked him and left and Daniel recovered like, THAT DAY.

I had my own appointment to see my doctor two days later to talk about the practical considerations of my busy life (Can't die! No one to look after Daniel if I do! Boo! Hoo! Need logical male insight, etc!) so took Daniel instead to follow up on his questionable ear infection and HE said, nothing wrong with his ears, his throat's clear, and he had no conjunctivitis OR cellulitis, bravo.

Which was SO not a surprise because Daniel wasn't being all infected-with-related-malaise in the first place.

Then a few days later, Sudden Onset Of Swollen Eye, redux, so I got in to see ANOTHER doctor, and he said "hayfever". Then I slapped myself on the forehead because I'd actually CONSIDERED this but, yes, Not A Doctor, what would I know?

So at this point, we were at the "My son has hayfever and his eye(s) swell a bit sometimes.", which was doable, you know?

Then one night, Daniel played with a kitten, and then we left, and then his right eye swelled up to monstrous proportions and not only did AROUND his eye swell, INSIDE it did too. No kidding, it was like some kind of spongy growth was taking over his eye socket. SO GROSS. So I whipped him off to the emergency room, pondered the 250 buck (!) service fee before deciding, "fuckit", then got a REALLY cool emergency doctor who consulted in the foyer OUTSIDE the emergency room, meaning we dodged all fees (!!) before we were sent on our way with a reliable diagnosis and a prescription for some over the counter meds.

Score!

The Not Scorey part of the evening was that Daniel was having an acute (so. not. cute) (oh har di har) allergic reaction to....

....cats.

Which was truly awesome because we have a cat.

Which is why his eye(s) had been going up and down like crazy.

BUT!

The good news is that Awesome Doctor doesn't believe Hollie is THE problem. "Keep the cat!", he cried when I furrowed my brown and asked the inevitable, so then I feigned relief because I kind of wasn't planning on ditching her anyway.

Granted, currently she's A problem, so comes with associated skull and crossbones and XXX, etc. Alternatively, there are anti histamines, but as we've all co-existed in peace until recently, it's more likely Hollie is adding to his "allergic load", rather than being the REASON for it.

The real culprit is more likely to be the grasses, pollens and usual allergy making shit floating around this season. I mean, about 99.9999% of the population has hayfever right now, Daniel is hardly Robinson Crusoe when it comes to puffy eyes and snuffly noses, you know?

And in the absence of a neat ending to this story...