Jane's Neck

If you look back at my "Sicko" entry you'll see that we had no clue that Jane's neck was as bad as it really is. 

She started fever 8 days ago, and developed a serious neck kink after one the second day. The third day we took her to an instacare.  They said it appeared to be nothing more than a kink in her neck.  We took her home.  She didn't improve.  Gave her a blessing.  The fever lowered for a few days, but nothing else improved.

On Saturday I noticed that her lower lip was sticking out oddly... like she had bit it an it was swollen.  Then Sunday after church she woke with a swollen left eye.  I nearly talked myself out of taking her to the instacare (the whole.. am I over reacting?  Maybe it only looks swollen to me bit), but kept having this driving feeling that something wasn't right.  Took her into a different instacare because the previous one closed at 5:00 pm on Sundays.

The doctor there was very concerned.  She was running a fever of 101.7 and it seemed to him that her tonsil on the left side might have an abscess on it.  Her transferred us to the Children's Hospital in Austin.

By the time they saw Jane, her fever had spiked to over 103.  Jane was remarkable.  A perfect angel getting her IV and cat scan.  From the scan they found that one her left lymph nodes had a very large abscess on it (the largest they had ever seen) and needed to be drained because it was threatening to close off her airway.

Surgery was set for 9:00 am this morning.  By 3:00 am Jane's left eye was nearly swollen shut and she was sick of being poked and examined (5 people doing the same exact thing 10 minutes apart from each other.... okay... maybe Mike and I were a little tired and cranky too  (we didn't have time to eat dinner before this all started) which made it that much MORE frustrating, but PLEASE.. how many people need to look in the ears and shove a wooden stick down the throat of a girl that the cat scan already told us what was wrong with?

She slept horribly (which of course meant I did too).  Was probably in pain and I didn't recognize that's what it was.  There were hours upon hours of unconsolable screaming and pleads of "I hungry.  I water.  I go home" (she wasn't allowed to eat or drink before the surgery and had close to nothing to eat the day we brought her in).

Woke to surgery prep with 2 1/2 hours sleep under our belt.  The doctor said the a huge pocket of pus oozed  out followed by a large amount of other pus and fluid (uhh...gag).  She now will have a one inch scar on her neck, but MAN is she doing better.  Recovery was a bit rough until we got her to eat, but she is now (finally) napping, with her neck oozing into the banage wrapped around it.

We are just so happen we took her in (and so sad that we tried stretching her neck during the week to loosen the "kink").  Ughh.

Bless a wonderful sister in our ward for sleeping on our couch last night, while we were at the hospital picking up our house, making us dinner tonight and trying her darndest to get Mike to let her walk our kids.  The world needs more Colettes.

Jane is doing well.  Doctors and nurses here LOVE her red hair.  Are there not many red heads in Texas??? I'll attached some pics later on.

Love you all!