So Pax went in to see the doctor on Friday, December 14th. And we thought we would get some sleep. He didn't start sleeping well again until atleast Sunday night when his prescription finally started to kick in.

 

Preslie has been talking for WEEKS about her mouth hurting.

But as terrible as it sounds it was hard to take her serious, she only told us her mouth hurt when she was crying, and she only ever cried when she got into trouble. So the conversations usually went a little something like this:

"Preslie, stop pushing Pax"

Preslie, crying "My mouth hurts".

We may get the terrible parent award here, but it was a little hard to believe anything was really wrong. Preslie has had a little button under her chin since she was born. We've talked to several doctors about it, especially her oncologist. This seemed most important during the whole leukemia situation we dealt with, plus I had a lymph node removed from my neck when I was about ten so it seemed like maybe she was having the same thing.

But then everything with leukemia died down a bit.

And her pediatrician hasn't seemed so worried about it since.

And the gastroenterologist told us he thought it was probably a cyst or lipoma (benign fatty tumor) and that the next time our deductible had been met we should talk about getting it removed. Well we have a zero dollar deductible, so that didn't matter. But between Paxton's surgery, and Eric's surgery, it kind of got pushed to the back burner.

BIG MISTAKE.

 

The Tuesday directly after Paxton just started feeling better Preslie got up before work and I thought to myself "Hmm . . . Preslie is getting a little bit of a double chin, she must be getting ready for a growth spurt." May sound weird, but if there is one thing I have noticed with my kids it's that they go through these phases, they beef up a bit and then they grow tall and stretch out, then beef up, grow. . .. and so on. I'm weird because I notice these kinds of things I know.

 

Wednesday it started to look huge. As in this picture here just below. She didn't like me touching it, when I could touch it I couldn't feel her "button" anymore, and it just looked huge and she seemed extremely uncomfortable. Luckily when the pediatrician's office heard about it, given her history and all, they got her right in that morning. Dr Miller put her on a round of antibiotics saying she thought that most likely the cyst had become infected. The antibiotics were supposed to get rid of the infection, and we left with a "Wait two weeks and let me know if it isn't fixed."

FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

 

 

It's always worst case scenario with Preslie.

I just wish I could get our pediatrician to remember that occasionally.

The next day the lump had doubled in size. I wish I had pictures of it, but sadly I can't get the few pictures from my phone to transfer across. But if you want the visual, look at the picture above and imagine it being twice that size. Eric said he thought we better talk to the doctor, I called and left a message, and within 10 minutes they called back saying they were referring her to an ENT and they had already set up the appointment for the next day.

 

Eric's brother, Scott, is in his Maxillofacial (oral surgery) residency in Texas, so Eric called him up and talked with him a bit about what was going on. He was pretty worried, especially considering how fast it was growing. He also said that any infection in the chin could swell so bad it could cut off breathing and that the infection could quickly spread down into the chest cavity.

 

Friday her neck was doubled in size again! Good thing we already had the appointment, we went into Southwest Idaho Ear Nose & Throat. We have stock in that place I think. When I was 18 I got my tonsils removed there, woke up out of surgery having seizures, was transferred to St. Al's for a week, and have had them ever since. Parker had tubes put in his ears there in 2008, and Paxton was just there getting his tongue clipped in October.

 

Our appointment was with Dr. Van der Graaf. Previously we had always seen Dr. Beck - the only pediatric ENT in Idaho, but she is insanely hard to get in to see, and honestly I loved "Dr. Van". The appointment pretty much went like this:

Dr. Van: Oh I see it, when was the last time she ate?

Me: About 10 this morning.

Dr. Van: Awesome, meet me over at St. Al's for surgery.

 

Our appointment was at 1:30, and she was in for surgery at 2:30. He left the room, his nurse came in with St. Al's on the phone trying to get us scheduled immediately. And then we were told to quickly walk over to the hospital and he'd meet us when he was done with appointments. Turned out he cancelled the rest of his appointments that day and came right over. Between filling out paperwork and prepping for surgery there was really no down time. When they want you to move, they get you to move. My Aunt Angel is a surgical tech at St. Al's and was so nice to come in on her day off to help assist with Preslie's surgery. It greatly put my mind at ease to have someone Preslie knew in the surgery with her.

 

In true Marshall child form when Preslie woke up out of anesthesia she was a screaming, freak out mess. They immediately came out to get me to try and calm her down. About 10 minutes later Eric came in to see if he could help. Nothing really worked. Our kids are just never going to be the ones who come out of anesthesia all cute and tired, the just SCREAM!

 

They made about a 1/2 inch incision in her chin and found that the subdermal cyst that had always been in her chin had abcessed and created this huge puss pocket. They lanced it and drained it. Angel told us there was a ton of puss and that they just kept squeezing, every time they thought they were done they would squeeze again and more would come out. They left the incision open and packed it with gauze. We got to take the packing out on Sunday - that was yummy stuff, Eric almost threw up.

 

All in all we had a pretty low key pre-Christmas eve weekend. We stayed at home and tried to relax . . . although we had more time of no sleep getting up every two hours to give Preslie pain pills and antibiotics. Surgery number 2 is scheduled for January 21st, they will go in and remove the cyst that caused it all to begin with, that way hopefully we will never have to deal with an emergency chin surgery again.

 

Good news for Preslie though, she got more Minnie's to add to her collection because of the whole ordeal!