Urgent Care

Last Updated on September 23, 2018 by

Well, today was not our day. Today, I had to take my baby to urgent care for something I couldn’t help him with. Today, I felt helpless. Today, a fear of mine came true just having to take my baby to receive medical treatment. Today was just not our day.

The morning started out like any other morning: diaper change, nursing, and some morning snuggles in bed. Dominic and I talked about his feet, hands, nose, and I told how much I loved him while giving him kisses on those chunky cheeks. What I noticed was that when I kissed his right side of his face, he winced and whined. I thought this was just his way of saying, “Ok, mom… I’m over this! Stop kissing on me and get on with the day!” So in response, I proceeded to continue our normal morning routine and all seemed well.

Dominic went down for his late morning nap and slept for an hour and a half. We have been sleep training recently so it was not unusual to hear him protest a little durning nap. When he wakes up from his nap, the majority of the time he is grumpy as if he thought it was rude that his body woke him up. Therefore, I go in when I hear him fussing, I talk to him, and try to get him to open his eyes to see me between tears before I actually pick him up. Today, I picked him up first and all seemed right in his little world.

A few minutes after he woke up, I again kissed his cheek and noticed how he again winced and began crying. Puzzled, I looked at him to show sympathy and to my surprise, I noticed a golf ball sized bulge on the right side of his neck! Truthfully, I panicked. I touched the bulge gently to feel it and Dominic started to cry so clearly this thing was causing him pain. It was solid and hard. It could’ve been mistaken for a swollen bug bite, but I was not about to take any chances. Off to urgent care we went!

Upon arriving at urgent care, the staff wants all the insurance information before you can be seen. Coincidentally, today was the start of my husband’s employer insurance policy! But, we didn’t have any information yet from the policy such as our member ID numbers, group number, etc. So we are frantically making calls to all the wrong numbers to obtain said information while our son sits in his carseat with his head cocked to one side because the bulge is preventing him from bending his head the other way.

In hindsight, the whole process from getting to urgent care up to being seen was about 20 minutes, but it felt like hours to us when you’re in panic mode and not really knowing what to do. Once we were seen by a doctor, the momma bear in me came out as I was ready to rip off the doctor’s fingers as she preformed palpitations on Dominic’s neck and he’s screaming in pain! I know it needed to be done; doesn’t make it any easier.At the end of the visit, Dominic has been tentatively diagnosed with a swollen lymphnode likely due to a clogged salivary gland. This could be caused by the excess saliva he’s producing from the teething. Dominic was given a shot of antibiotics (another tearful event) and we were sent home with more antibiotics to continue for the next 10 days.

Today I learned that this is the first time I feared for my child and it is most likely not the last time. As minimal as his diagnosis may sound, it was serious to us as first time parents and not having any kind of answers or ways to help Dominic. My job as his mommy is to make everything better and today, I couldn’t do that for him. I beat myself up for not noticing his symptoms sooner. But, tomorrow is a new day and I’m hopeful that we’ll have our smiling baby boy back soon. Until then, we pray our sweet boy responds well to the antibiotics!Always,Samantha

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