We had yet another hospital stay in our family this spring. I'm beginning to think we should be eligible for our own room....with our name on the door at the hospital! =) On a late Friday afternoon, Miranda (7.5yrs old) was trying to climb a tree on the lower part of our property (near where an old cattle barn used to be) and stepped on a huge rusty nail that went deep enough she had to use a lot of force to remove it from her foot. We called the doctor and did all that he suggested (warm soaks, irrigating it, etc) all that evening. By that evening she was very sore, but was doing well we thought. The next day, she was tired and sore, but still okay from what we could tell. Because her foot was bandaged, we didn’t look closely at it that Saturday morning because Mariah had double-header high school softball games, Miranda said it was okay and our morning was chaotic. At the game, she was sleepy, so we let her snuggle on a blanket behind the bleachers and take a nap. At one point during the second ballgame, she asked me to show someone her puncture wound, so I took off the dressing.....much to my surprise, we discovered a HUGE red, hot, raised area on the TOP of her foot, a red streak starting up her leg, as well as discovering that she was running a pretty high fever. I called the doctor who was on-call for our medical practice and that doctor insisted I take her to the ER right away (less than 1mo before we were there due to McKenna’s motorcycle/dirtbike accident!!). The ER doc evaluated her and found that she had a very nasty infection, requiring IV antibiotics. My poor baby girl was in the hospital for over 24hrs on IV antibiotics. She was such a trooper and I was so proud of how brave she was during her stay. It took three attempts before her IV was placed (due to her small veins), but she sat still and allowed the nurses to do what they needed to do.
