What's your blood type?

That was the question Emily posed at the dinner table tonight. We were talking about Ethan's excursion to Primary Children's Medical Center Emergency Room Sunday night. It all started with Ethan complaining of a sore neck and having a mild fever on Thursday night. I was worried he was coming down with the FLU and watched him carefully but by Friday morning he was fever free and mostly pain free. The sore neck returned on Friday night and lingered through Saturday. A call to the doctor urged a visit if he didn't improve in 24 hours. Sunday night--same thing. Once again the doctor suggested a late night visit rather than waiting until morning. Our appointment at the local clinic finished at 10:00 pm but the night was still young. We trekked to Salt Lake City (45 minutes away) to make our first visit to a hospital emergency room.

Strangely, having 5 kids, we have never had to grace that part of the health care system. Tim did have an overnight visit when he was one for RSV but we sidestepped the emergency room. I am always a bit worried in situations like this if we are going to pick up something that might be worse than what we came in for. The jury is still out on that, ask me again in a couple of days.

Not surprisingly the admittance process at Primary's was all that I have been told it would be. Kind, upbeat, helpful and quick. We did settle down in our exam room for a good long stay though by emergency room standards I think our 3+ hour stay is probably nothing to complain about. Ethan was having trouble turning his head and had a huge swollen lymph node. The doctors were concerned even though the symptoms were somewhat inconclusive that a deeper infection might be present like Meningitis or an abscess so a CT Scan was ordered.

Ethan was a real trooper, he never shed a tear, nodded quietly and bravely everytime a nurse would explain a procedure. When they put in the IV in his hand, they initially missed his vein and had to dig awhile to find it, but he didn't even flinch. They drew a vial of blood and he watched it all. Then he had to hold very still for the CT scan, he was so good. Both doctors and nurses were surprised at how well he took everything for being only three.

Luckily all our worse fears were found negative, no deep infections, no abscesses, just an infected node. Thank goodness for antibiotics, doctors, our health care system and hospitals that specialize in children. I don't have a picture today of my brave little guy, but he was a super patient and I'm very thankful his adventure to the hospital did not turn more serious. We even made it to bed by 3:30 am.

Back to our dinner conversation...Emily asked what Ethan's blood type was and before anyone had a chance to say a thing, He piped up with:

RED!