I would love to blog more...but just about Steven...

Early Saturday morning (6:45 a.m.) Steven woke me to say his eye really hurt. He had taken out his contacts, but it hurt bad!
So I got up, put drops in and had him use a cold compress. We sat together downstairs watching The Firm for a while. I tried to call
the optometrist -but they are closed on the weekends:0( So about 8:45 he shares that is REALLY still hurts and I see that he is real
sensitive to the light that is now streaming in the windows. So I called the regular advice nurse line and they advised me that their protocol states that I need to take him straight to the emergency room within 4 hours of the onset of symptoms. Knowing he had been up since 5:30 (he had told me) I had him get dressed and we quickly headed out.

We were seen surprisingly quick in the ER (saw the dr. within 45 minutes) then sat for 45 minutes until he came back and said that
he had spoken to the Opthamologist on call and we were to go see him at 2:30 on the other side of town. He said a nurse would be back shortly with discharge papers --but she never came! We waited a little more than an hour before I flagged someone else down and they had us on our way out the door in 2 minutes. We paid our $100 co-pay and headed to the pharmacy. It was a nightmare --first they said they didn't have the antibiotic drops, then it was the pain drops, then one could be generic, but both rang up brand name price $284 was the first price she gave me. I had them check again and ended up only paying my $94 and we were on our way after only 72 minutes in the pharmacy.

We headed home with just enough time to eat, grab our stuff and head to the Opthamologist. Jack went to my parents with Cyn & Brian and we went to the doctor. He told us it was a Corneal Ulcer and VERY SERIOUS! He cautioned Steven about ever sleeping with contacts on again and went as far as to say when he first came to Sacramento they would admit people to the hospital with this -to ensure they got the drops every hour to avoid possibly going blind. He told us to keep the drops in every hour on the hour and come back Monday.

This brought up a dilema -up to this point I was putting the drops in for him. He was scheduled to attend his friends (twins) birthday party and sleep over at their house that night. It was decided that if he could put the drops in himself -he could still go --but no swimming.

We then headed to my parents for dinner -we were supposed to be celebrating Steven's 13th birthday. We stopped and got him a grande vanilla bean frappacino to make him smile and then we headed to my parents. Another post will follow on the birthday -he had a good time -but had wanted to swim -which was a no -go.

He learned over the next couple of hours to put his eye drops in and after dinner we took him to his party. He was there until 10am Sunday morning.. texting me after every eye drop was put in. When I picked him up, the parents said how responsible he had been and how proud they were of him for doing it on his own (although they were totally willing to help him!). We headed home and he told me they had been up til about 1 am and he was up again at 7am (which fit the 6 hours the doctor had said he could sleep before waking and resuming eye drops).

We were excited about the Little League World Series Championship game with a team from California in it and the Giants game was gonna be on an hour later. We all sat down to watch. 1/2 hour into the LLWS I took this picture. He was exhausted. I had to wake him up EVERY hour to put drops in during his 4 hour nap. He slept just long enough to miss both games.

Today we saw the Opthamologist again. He said it is healing, still SERIOUS and we should see him again on Wednesday. So we continue with drops every hour....and lots of prayer of a full recovery.