El Nino's Big Adventure

We thought el nino had a little case of pink eye (according to the pediatrician on call over the weekend). Mom detected a problem late Saturday and immediately called the pediatrician. I wasn't too upset at that point, just wanted to alert the doctor and find out if I needed to do anything. A couple of hours later his eye looked much worse and mommy started to panic. What is this extreme worry that comes over me now? I don't worry about my own health concerns like this. I don't jump to the absolute worst case scenario when it comes to me or el's dad or our daug. But when it comes to el, I lose all perspective. And I know I'm being extreme at the time, but I have difficulty bringing myself back down to normalcy. It didn't help that daddy was at work; so I had no one to share my fears with. Ughhh.

I was putting on my coat to take el to the emergency room when I spoke to el's dad on the phone. He calmed me down and suggested I wait until morning, put some eye drops in his eye... So we went to the pharmacy instead of the emergency room, and I found some very mild eye drops that said nothing on the packaging about not giving it to babies. I put one drop in his eye, and we got ready for bed. Now, mind you, el is perfectly content this whole time. He is smiling and laughing even. There was a little period of time when he was upset, but now I think that had more to do with being tired than with his eye. He was not rubbing his eye or otherwise indicating irritation in that area.

The next morning, Sunday, his eye was even more swollen. Again, panic, should we take him to the emergency room? Now, the pediatrician had told me the day before that we could see her in the afternoon on Sunday if it was not better. So, why I would feel the need to go to the stressful emergency room, who knows? Again, daddy was the voice of reason, but this time he suggested putting Visine in el's eye. Do NOT do this. We found out later that we should not have done that. Mommy didn't look at the bottle, assumed daddy had read the label and knew what he was doing. Well, daddy did read the label but ignored the part where it clearly states not to give it to children under 2. Thankfully we didn't do any harm as it turned out but it wasn't something we should have done at all the pediatrician said. She looked at el in the afternoon and couldn't see any foreign object in his eye so decided to treat him for pink eye. Mind you, the swelling had gone down significantly by now though he was still red in and around his eye. So we don't really know for sure that he has pink eye but that is what we are treating him for. And he is doing fine.

Today, Monday, he awoke with no swelling or redness around the eye but still red in the eye. And he is cheery, talkative, and sweet. And mommy can only hope that next time she will maintain a bit more perspective. (the update - el saw his regular pediatrician on Tuesday and no pink eye. She thought he must have poked himself in the eye instead. That's my boy!)