A Lesson in Appreciation

Well, it seems that life was going along a little too well for us and God has decided to throw a bit of a monkey wrench in the whole situation. As some of you may already know, Alex has been giving us a lot to worry about the last couple of days. It started in Saturday evening when he was complaining about his wrist hurting. He said he had fallen outside so I didn't give it too much thought and he put an ice pack on it and went to bed. Sunday morning he woke up with knee pain on the right side, which throughout the day progressed to ankle pain on the left side. By Sunday afternoon, he was pretty much just lying around. Since he had recently had strep throat, I was a bit concerned that something was going on. We went in to see the pediatrician today (whole new topic- but our beloved pediatrician is leaving so we are attempting to transition to another one- timing couldn't be better :( ) and she ran a battery of tests, most of which will not be back until end of this week probably-mostly checking for Lyme's disease, JRA, etc. At the doctor's office he was actually acting pretty good, up walking, not really complaining too much. When we got home, the doctor called and said that his sed rate was high (indicator of inflammatory process somewhere) and that she wanted to increase his Ibuprofen and that I should bring him back if his joints became "hot" or he ran a fever. Well, around 3:00 or so, he wasn't even moving. We couldn't get him to walk or even move his arms. He was in excrutiating pain. We attempted to soak him in a warm bath, which was just torture for the poor kid because he then had to get dressed (or be dressed, actually) which made him scream in pain for about 15 minutes. My heart was just breaking. As anyone who knows Alex knows that he is such an active kid and really tough so this just killed me to see him just sobbing in pain. Anyways, we ended up in Children's ER tonight with not so reassuring news. In the ER, his temp was 101.5, and many joints were "hot", but not red and he was in so much pain he didn't even move- by this time Chris was carrying him from place to place. The doctor said that he has "some kind of arthritis"- now we just need to figure out which kind. Although he recently had strep, he didn't feel his arthritis was really related to that. He thought this looked more classic JRA or something similar. We are hoping for strictly some funky viral infection (which it could be). We won't know anything for a few days at least. For now, he is on some really strong pain killers (the Vicodin in the ER made him extremely goofy :) and needs to just take it easy. This is so hard. I have never thought I took for granted the fact that our kids are healthy. But, when faced with something like this, you can't help but think of all the years you didn't have to worry about this kind of thing. Alex has always been a handful for us physically. But, I would give anything right now to have him tearing around this house like a maniac. Keep us in your prayers and I will post news as I get it.