Florida Vacation Part 4: What kind of bugs live down here?...A trip (or two) to the local health clinic.

Apparently Brayden has a problem with the biting bugs in Florida. He got bit at some point when we got here but I didn't notice the bites until his whole ankle swelled and he had a huge red rash the size of a baseball around the bite. I noticed it in the morning and by the afternoon, it had grown bigger.

Ben and I put Brayden down for a nap and we went out to go to the Internet cafe (I have become so used to wireless Internet service that I almost can't live without it!) and on the way there, I called our pediatrician. I had Ben talk to the nurse on the phone because I am really bad at explaining things and estimations (I knew they would ask about the approximate size and I would have said cantaloupe-sized...I have a slight problem with exaggeration!)

Anyways, the nurse tells Ben that we can watch it and if it starts to bubble up and ooze then we should take him to the ER or a clinic to it checked out and Ben says "well, I guess we will be heading off to the ER or the clinic because it has already bubbled up and burst." I am freaking out because I just want to be home with my regular doctor and clinics just seem like places that I don't want to be...especially on vacation.

The first clinic I call doesn't open until 5 and it is for uninsured men and women who are unemployed...not us. I try another clinic that will take our insurance so we head over after nap. It was really nice, hardly any wait and we walked out of there with a diagnosis of cellulitis and a prescription for a topical steroid cream and an oral antibiotic.

After dinner, we pick up the prescriptions and head home to administer the treatment. I must first warn you that Brayden is not a good patient...he is the worst patient known to mankind! He hates medicine passionately. We two-team him and I am administer the antibiotic while Ben holds him down. We try to avoid the antibiotic he spits out and actually get him to swallow most of it. He is very upset so he gets a hug from Daddy and then...puke every where (On a side note, did you know that raisins take like forever to digest because 6 hours after he ate them, they were still in his stomach...weird) and especially on Daddy. Thank god it wasn't Mommy that got puked on because then we would have had a double mess to clean up! Also, thank god for leather couches...must invest in some when I win the lottery.

I call the on-call nurse at our pediatrician to see if we should give him more antibiotic or not...overdosing your kid is bad apparently. She says that we have to get it in him and if he pukes it up again, then we will have to call the prescribing doctor for an alternative...OK because it is already about 9 at night.

We try the old Medicine-Milk-Sippy combo but he takes one drink and he knows. He throws his sippy and screams "It taste like Medicine!" Crap...so we try the candy approach, which we have none of so we pick through some trail mix and get out all the peanut butter chips and m&m's. He gets a little medicine at a time and then some candy. We do this for 10 minutes and after the last bit of medicine. He freaks out and Ben takes him outside. I come out to see if he is ok and Ben is once again covered in puke...that's twice in less than an hour, folks!

I try to call the clinic doctor but surprise, surprise I have no way to reach him. So I call the nurse back and she assess the situation to see if we can wait until morning or if we need to take him to an ER. Morning it is so we are off to bed...with Brayden in our bed of course because the nurse scares the crap out of me with all the instructions of go immediately to the ER if this happens or that develops.

It's now Thursday and Hurricane Fay, which is only Tropical Storm Fay to us, has reached us. I call the clinic at 8 to see if they are open so we could race in. The clinic is off the island and we are staying on the island and if the wind gets bad enough, they close the bridge and we would be stranded.

It seems to take forever to call us back and there really isn't anyone there...maybe I am a bit panicky about the whole possibility of the bridge closing. We see the same doctor and I tell him Brayden needs the antibiotic shot, which he has had before, because the pain of a needle is nothing to the hour of pain he goes through when he screams and cries and eventually throws up. He agrees and we get the shot.

As the doctor walks out, I say "Should we follow up with our pediatrician when we get home in 2 days?" He says "That sounds like a good idea." Oh does it. I would think that to CYA every clinic and ER doc would say as they were walking out the door, "Please follow up with your regular doctor." I guess that just me and my whacking everybody sues everybody thinking. As you can see, the doctor was a bit of a doofus. Ben says "They should give our copay to you since you basically told the doctor what to do." Oh Ben, it's called being a mom...a bossy, know-it-all one at that!

We are out of the clinic no problem...well except for the minor hold up of paying our bill because some deranged women was screaming in another language at the office staff but she eventually left and so did we. We made it back over the bridge, thank god!

Brayden is now fully healed but don't think for a second that the next time we go down to Florida that I won't bathe him in massive amounts of DEET! A bug bite that results in that much chaos is not going to happen to me again.