Carl

It has been an eventful month.  I always have so much to blog about, and not enough time to blog it, but this time I'm going to focus on Carl.

He's been having - for lack of a better term - a lump in his throat for several weeks now.  He's gone to a nurse practitioner and our doctor, both of whom referred him to a specialist.  The specialist ran tests, and one came back positive for a form of staph.  They put him on an antibiotic and nothing changed.  They put him on a stronger antibiotic, and still nothing.  THEN they put him on a Metro-Dos pack.  While he was finishing up the steroid and the antibiotic they decided to do a CT scan.  We went in on Thursday, put the contrast dye in his arm and did the CT.  As we were walking out of the Ambulatory Care Center (ACC) he started complaining about itching.  We drove 2 minutes down the road to eat lunch, and as they were seating us, Carl started picking his shirt off and almost trying to take it off.  To make a long story short - he was breaking out in hives and having an allergic reaction.  I called the ACC and they told us to go to the emergency room immediately.  After we arrived they gave him a Benadryl shot and observed him for an hour.

Fast forward to the next day.

We went to the dr to get the results for the CT scan and discuss the reaction to the contrast dye.  First of all, Carl has a swollen lymph node and his blood tests came back normal, with the exception of his calcium being high.  Dr says the lymph node is not pathological in size.  However, he wants it to go away over the next month.  If it grows or stays the dr says he's going to 'stick a needle in it' so that we can see what's going on.

Secondly, he said that next time Carl is given contrast dye he has to have a steroid and Benadryl before it happens.  Carl reminded the dr that the had been on a steroid (the Metro Dos pack).  The doctor then told us that if Carl hadn't been on that he would have died.  He can NEVER have contrast dye again - he said we need to put it on every chart and paper that we ever fill out.  Yuck.  I'm so SO thankful that everything turned out ok.

So that's it in a nutshell.  We are all doing great, but it has been a VERY exciting week!