Keagan Balboa

Keagan woke up on Saturday with his left eye swollen shut. Joy! We noticed it was a little red and puffy before bed on Friday and thought he got a mosquito bite (yes, they are STILL in our yard) in the area, put a little ice on it and put him to bed. When we saw him Saturday morning, we called the weekend clinic and got a 9:30am appointment. The clinic doctor suggested some Benadryl, ice packs and a couple hours monitoring at home. If it didn't get better, head to the ER. Well, we did as perscribed and he looked the same 3 hours later, so off the ER we went. We arrived just before 2:00pm and they transfered us to the "Urgent Care" department- which sadly had about an 8 X 8 waiting room with 6-8 other people in it at all times. There we waited for 2+ hours. Once in a room, we waited some more. Luckily, the rooms have a TV and we got some food at the cafe so we were all a bit happier. We saw two doctors- first the regular ER doctor, then the on-call pediatrician. Keagan was a super trooper- he was actually playing with the pediatrician while she was examining him and she said "I can't believe you don't want to have 10 more of him" and that he was the best patient she'd seen in a long time. The doctors conferred and they said they couldn't be 100% sure if it was a purely allergic reaction, or an infection. Our best guess is that it was initially a bug bite (there is a small dot that looks like a bite on his lid) which opened the doors for an oportunistic infection. Luckily, the eye itself was fine- not red at all and he could track movement. It was purely in the tissue of the eye lid. They decided to go with a round of antibiotics, starting off with an intramuscular injection, followed by a few days of oral. Poor Keagan completely lost it with the shots- he had to have two, one in each leg, because it's too much liquid for one suringe. He had been sooooo good, for soooo long, but when that needle came, all his coping skills were spent. He screamed for several minutes, but luckily we were discharged almost immediately afterwards. He passed out in the car on the way home, and we pulled into the driveway at 6:40pm and put him right to bed. He slept till 8:00am this morning. This morning his eye is improving with each passing hour (the pictures are from yesterday, he doesn't look this bad today), and he's acting completely normally. We will be calling our regular doctor tomorrow morning to give them the update and possibly go in for a follow-up appointment. For now, his nickname is still Rocky.