Imagine this: I get a phone call while at the gym from my 20-year son (and face it parents, you know in this day and age kids don't call -- they text, they tweet, they SnapChat, they Vine, or send mental telepathy before they call, so you know when they do, something is wrong).
Through all the muffled sounds of being buried underneath his blankets, he tell me to bring home ice cream to help cool his body down.
Mind you, the last I saw him about 6:30am today, he calls me from his room asking to bring him Tylenol or Ibuprofen and water. Thinking this would cure his headache and sore throat, I left for work.
I got home with his Vividly Vanilla ice cream ready to serve him a nice big fat bowl, but instead found him hunched over, shaking and shivering.
So what does a parent do? We start with the barrage of questions:
1) Why didn't you go to the doctor earlier?
2) How long has this been going on?
3) Did you take anything for this?
4) what did you eat last?
You know, all the typical questions. He wasn't having it.
He waves his hand and tells me, "Please take me to emergency."
It was enough to make your heart just sink.
All I could do was to calmly tell him to throw on some light clothing on and wear flip flops. We had to go. Quickly!
We get to the hospital and after they triaged him, take him to the one of the rooms, take his temperature, can you imagine my surprise when they told me he has 103.4 fever?
It was all I could do not to panic. I couldn't. I couldn't show fear in my eyes.
Right then that is.
But after Aaron tells me his head felt it was going to burst or he was going to pass out, you best believe I was going to flag a nurse down, and that I did.
Eric, the ER nurse, worked swiftly to get an IV on him, heart monitor, oxygen and form of steroids for swelling along with a stronger type of Motrin.
I kicked into gear to get him cold paper towels for his forehead, behind his neck and by then Eric came with ice packs for his underarms.
Steve, his dad, was talking to Aaron to keep him alert. We didn't want him passing out.
The doctor came in and checked him. She looked in his mouth and saw his tonsils were inflamed. Well, there you go, Tonsilitis at best, but they wanted to rule out an abscess so they wheeled him away.
They just returned from getting a CTScan and we won't know the results yet.
He's already gone through one bag of IV fluids and hung up a second bag.
He's getting hydrated, thank God and his body, by touch, has cooled down some.
We're still here and still waiting for results.
His dad and I are talking to Aaron and keeping him awake and he seems somewhat more alert than when we first arrived.
It's all a mom can do but be here and try and take that pain away.
We do what we know best: be here.
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