Alex's Big Adventure (Hopefully Pt 1 of 1)

I came home from buying groceries on Wednesday night; Tiffany met me at the door. "We've gotta run down to the ER, get ready to go," she said. So I did what any new parent would do - panic! It turns out that Alex had a "rectal abscess" on his bottom; what a layperson like myself would call a boil :-) So I thought - no biggie, go to the ER, get it lanced, go home. Right?

Wrong! Turns out that since Alex is so young (5.5 weeks) they decided to put an IV in him with an antibiotic drip. We ended up staying the night (and a good chunk of the next day) at Burnsville Ridges hospital. (See the pic of Tiff and Alex below). The pediatric surgeon drained him on Thursday, and after checking his blood counts, temperature, etc, we were allow to go home.

On Friday, the abscess returned :-( Due to the superhuman healing powers of babies, the incision site had healed up, and was beginning to fill up again. On Saturday morning, we took Alex down to Children's Hospital (much closer to home), and had the procedure redone. As of Sunday morning, everything is looking good, and hopefully this story will have a happy postscript. Unfortunately, there is a ~40% chance that this type of abscess will be a reoccurring one (which would mean a cyst deeper under Alex's skin). If this is a re-occurring problem, it will call for full-blown surgery. Keep your fingers crossed!