Caleb and his weird medical problems...

A couple of years ago, we thought Caleb had appendicitis and rushed him to the emergency room.  He had EVERY symptom (minus a fever) of appendicitis.  He was in so much pain that he was doubled over and sobbing in agony.  They took him in for a CAT scan and lo and behold, it was NOT appendicitis!  They didn't know what it was actually.  After several visits to the Dr. and having every Dr in the clinic examine him, they couldn't come up with ANYTHING!  They did blood tests, ultrasounds, pulled out medical books to see if they were missing something, everything you can imagine to figure it out.  Let me tell you, there is nothing scarier than having your child doubled over in pain and having no diagnosis.  They finally decided that it was probably a pulled muscle because he is so athletic and active and that it would heal in time, $1400.00 later...actually I think it was more like $2200.00 now that I think about it.  But it did eventually heal up, after about 2 months.


So in July, Caleb showed us what appeared to be a swollen gland.  We figured it would heal in time and just kinda forgot about it.  Every once in a while he would complain that it hurt but I figured it was just inflamed because he has really bad hay fever.  ALL.THE.TIME.  Allergy meds only help a little bit, he's pretty much congested year 'round.  But after discovering that he's had this swollen lump since June, I decided to take him to the Dr., just to be on the safe side. 


So we go to the Dr. the other day, they got us right in because of the length of time that it's been going on. (Thanks Red Rock Pediatrics!!!)   He pokes and prods at it and even appeared baffled for a minute after examining his mouth and throat.  That's because it didn't have the normal symptoms that it should present with, of course.  Caleb doesn't do anything the easy way.  He finally tells me that it's probably a infected saliva gland.  HUH?!  I didn't even know that was possible!  So he prescribed him some heavy duty antibiotics and then told me to have him eat lots of pickles, lick lemons, basically eat sour things so his mouth would water a lot and that would help alleviate the infection because the saliva gland is probably clogged.  BUT, if the antibiotics and they sour foods therapy (ha ha) didn't help, then he needs to come back.  


So we're keeping our fingers crossed  that this works because I don't want to think of what the alternative problem could be.  As a matter of fact, I'm completely burying my head in the sand about any other problems, because I can't even begin to deal with any other possibilities that it could be.