Medical Adventure in the South

Wednesday was an interesting day (the word ‘interesting’ was not what I thinking last night but we’ve all had a good nights sleep)...

Willie came back to camp at 3:30 and we left Olivia behind with the cook, thinking forsure we would be bake in time for supper. Crazy us.

We went out to the clinic in Waveland which is only about 15 min. away. “There are no doctors in today”. Okay that’s strange but alright... off we went to another clinic that had just moved locations - big sign saying OPENING Feb 2/09... the door was locked. A lady saw us at the door and said that the clinic in Long Beach was open. Okay... so we got in the truck and drove about 1/2 hour to Long Beach. We found the clinic (our GPS decided it didn’t want to help us out so we had to search for it.) We walked in and a nurse greeted us at the door saying the doctor wasn’t taking any more patients. Awesome! By now mom was tired and frustrated and so my question was... “Is there a doctor anywhere in the south? My son needs to see one!” By now he was having a lot of trouble walking because his feet were swelling and the joy of carrying 53lbs was fading. The friendly nurse said we would have to go to the hospital.

So we went off to Memorial Hospital in Gulfport and we arrived there at 4:50pm. We got ‘registered’ and then we sat down... We were getting a little hungry but Willie didn’t want to leave and miss the doctor so we sat. I think it was about 6:00 when we got to go do his vitals and the nurse looked at him. About 10 minutes later another nurse came and put us in a different waiting room - a VERY cold one! We were the only ones there and Samuel was super hyper by this time and hopping around on one foot and driving us crazy. He was hungry and so where we! At 6:28 Willie finally went out to the cafeteria to see if he could get something to eat... apparently they closed at 6:30pm and so he got nothing! Well Samuel was expecting Chicken and Fries and was a little disappointed when Willie came back empty-handed. At 7:00 we were called by the nurse again and we got into a room. She looked at him, another nurse came to look at him and then we sat again.... At 7:30 I was starving so I went on a vending machine hunt. The hospital is SUPER secure and so I had to be escorted out and then back in. Well on the way back in I had to wait for someone to escort me into the ER’s locked doors and she forgot about me so I stood there for 10 or 15 min. Finally the security guard could see my frustration and took me in. So ya, I missed the doctor! Willie said she had said it must have just been a really bad reaction to something and was giving him a steroid to make it go away.... so he’s on a few different things. We were back at the camp by 8:45pm. He got worse before he got better and this morning (Thursday morning) he’s walking again and he’s back to his skinny self; swelling is down and no welts or rash! In two days it should disappear completely and we’ll be back at it! We missed our play date with Callie and Carson this week because of this and we were all sad about that but look forward to next week!

Thanks for all your prayers - they were needed and they were heard. Thank you Jesus for your mercy on us!