CURVE BALL!!

You know those times when you are going through life, everything seems to be going pretty good, and then BAM, you get thrown a curve ball, (and not the ball thrown at me in a past blog post i posted where I swore at a church game!) Well, that was us recently and that would be why the blog has been neglected as of late!!

Let me start from the beginning. A few months ago, Maysen (my oldest) had a retainer device put into his mouth to move his back molar back and twist it around because it came in the wrong direction. Well, he tends to have a lot of anxiety about the Dentist (I have no idea where he got that from, cause I NEVER freak out when I have to go the dentist). Anyway, he threw kind of a tantrum because of the glue to put the retainer in, and he thought it was going to hurt. Well, because of his tantrum, he got glue on his tongue.

So now here we are three months later, and two days before Halloween, Maysen comes into me and says, "Mom, look what the glue did to my tongue!" He proceeded to show me his tongue and my heart immediately dropped into my stomach!! What I saw, did not look like the cause of some harmless glue from his retainer and it had not been there two weeks prior when I put a pill for him to swallow on the back of his tongue. This is what I saw:


It must have grown under his tongue and then finally broke through the top of his tongue because his tongue was split open and this was protruding out from it.

Immediately the next morning, I had him into the doctors office and having worked in the medical field for so long, you tend to be able to read the faces of doctors a little more. When he showed the doctor his tongue, I could see the concern and possibly a small gulp.

The doctor immediately performed blood work and his awesome MA got on the phone to get us into a specialist and was able to amazingly get us fit in at Primary Children's in two days!! What a great MA!!

We decided to stay at Brad's parents the night before because his appointment was really early in the morning and they live closer, and we would be able to leave our other kids asleep. On the way to their house, we of course, can't do anything without having other things fall apart around us. We had a blowout on the car. Great!!

The next day, which just happened to also be Halloween, we were up at a Pediatric ENT's office at Primary Children's getting his tongue assessed. The ENT got the exact same concerned look on his face and again, possibly a small gulp.

They sent us over for a CT scan because of a small lump which they thought they also found in his neck, but that just turned out to be a swollen lymph node. They did find some thickening of the throat which the doctor says may or may not be something depending on what we find.

Maysen was scheduled for surgery for the following Monday (three days later) and it was a necessity to get the retainer out for that. We tracked down a dentist to remove his retainer, and he too got that same look on his face.

At this point, I am obviously imagining the worst as any parent would probably do.

So Monday comes and we take him in to have the mass, or lesion, or tumor, which it had been called all three terms, removed.

His surgery went well and now it was just the waiting game of whether the biopsies came back with cancer or not. We had gotten the car fixed by this point with all different tires put on and were on our way home from the hospital when..... yip.... you guessed it... another blow out. Thats just how we roll around our household!

The doctor assured us that the results would take 24 to 48 hours. Those hours were long and when I called up at 48 hours and they said no results yet, I was anxious. I called again at 72 hours, still no results. Again, the next day, still no results.

By Friday, I was ready to be admitted into the insane asylum and was going crazy. I decided to give it one last shot and call up there again. The nurse said,"I'm sorry, still no results."

By now, I am pretty much ready to go postal on someone at this point and told her she better call down to pathology and find out what is going on, or I will.

She called down there and called me back within five minutes and tells me that they had to order special stains to read the tissue. I'm thinking, what does that mean? Does that mean, they found something but want to be sure or what? She then tells me they won't have results until the following Monday. (A week after the surgery was performed).

Holy Cow!! I swear a week is supposed to go by way quicker than that!! Monday night, I finally receive a call from the doctor, hoping for good news but as prepared as I could be to receive the bad news and he tells me the following:

Hi this is Dr. G. I am so sorry that it has taken so long to get the biopsy results to you. I do want to let you know that there was no cancer found in your child's biopsy. We did however find in the tissue removed, a foreign object that was too hard to see what it was under the microscope but somehow a foreign object got inside of his tongue and was trying work its way out.

Its kind of the same reaction as an ingrown toenail trying to work itself out. It had caused it to become this huge protrusion, tumor, mass, lesion, whatever you want to call it.

The only thing we can figure is that, when he threw the tantrum while getting the retainer put in, maybe he did get cut on the tongue and maybe it was glue or something else that got inside his tongue and then healed. Then, three and a half months later, was trying to work its way out!! It looks like maybe Maysen did know what he was talking about when he said the glue did it to his tongue. I guess we will never know.

What I do know is that I was so relieved to hear that news. My heart wasn't sinking anymore! I could breath again. I never want to have to go through that again and pray that I won't have to.

Later the doctor admitted to me that he had no idea what it was and that it made him very nervous.

I have gained maybe an inkling of an understanding as those who have to actually gone through the nightmare of being told their child is sick with a disease that could take their life but still don't have a clue what it would really be like had I had been told my child had cancer.

It was a good reminder to not take life for granted and tell your loved ones how much you love them often. Squeeze your kids extra hard and extra long!! (Well, my kids are always telling me not to squeeze them so hard because they can't breath but ya know.)

We didn't totally come out of this empty handed though. I have been trying for two years to figure out why Maysen has been having sleeping problems. It has been affecting his life in every way. He is falling way behind in school because of it. (At least that it my opinion of why he is falling behind).

Doctors up to this point have just wanted to put him on sleeping pills and that's really all. I was about to call an ENT myself and have him tested for some things when all of this happened.

We now know that he has a deviated septum, enlarged tonsils and are testing for sleep apnea. Hopefully we will have some answers soon!