So here goes!

The past few months have been insane. I've been so busy with appointments and cleaning that I haven't really got to do much else! I'm not sure if I mentioned but Alex broke her wrist in recess at school right after school started. They were playing a game and she tripped and snapped her wrist in the process of catching herself. No surgery was needed but numerous appointments with ortho surgeons were. She had snapped both bones across in her wrist. We did X-rays every 2 weeks and finally towards the end of November she was in the clear.

The last week of November Daddy went on a business trip. He had just taken one a few months before but this was for some special training. While he was gone I noticed Sophia had this goose egg on her jawline. I thought maybe she just slipped at the table and cracked her jaw or the kids were playing rough. The next morning it looked the same. I went to Women's Bible Study and asked some of the ladies to look at it, well I forgot one was a retired Pediatrician. Duh! She was concerned and told me I needed to get Sophia in. She thought she had an infected lymph node. I came home and called the Dr's office telling them what she (one of their retired peds) had told me. Well took her in and her Dr said he thought it was the same thing so he gave us Augmentin. About 10 days later I made another appointment because it was getting ugly and I wanted to see if they could drain the infection like everyone was telling us to do.
Well this trip her Dr decided maybe we should try draining it however with her just being a new 2 year old he didn't want to do it I guess you could say. lol He wanted her sedated so he sent us to the ENT department. Well ENT said he wasn't sure what was going on but didn't want to drain it yet and gave us steroids and a different antibiotic. It was a nightmare getting her to take the meds. 10 days later they called in more and we went in for another visit. It was then he decided to schedule a CT Scan because it obviously was not getting any better and staying the same. He thought it was something called a Branchial Cleft Cyst. So we went home and continued her meds and on Dec 22nd we showed up at 7:30 am to have her sedated and a CT scan done.
She was in a really good mood that morning and had no idea WHAT was about to happen. It sucked. First sticking an IV in and then a shot to sedate her. 30 minutes of fighting, screaming, and it wasn't working so they had to come do another shot to knock her out. She was not going to just go to sleep. Finally got the CT done and because of 2 doses of sedative it took about a hour or so for her to come around.
The results showed that it was infact her lymph nodes. So he told us we needed to have surgery done and get the dead lymph node out, take out others in that area so they do not get infected and take a biopsy of a healthy one to see what was going on. He really didn't want to do surgery but felt it was the best option. There is a nerve that controls lip movement in that area and he was afraid of knicking it. We went ahead and scheduled surgery. On Christmas day her infection popped. We were a bit worried because everyone had been telling us this was MRSA. It slowly oozed but started instantly looking better. The skin was more pink than purple but now it was definitely on the disgusting side. Finally surgery was on the 28th.
We arrived at 6 am for 7 am surgery. She was really happy at first but then after a few pre-op people came in the room looking at her owwie she knew something was up and went into terror mode. She latched to her daddy and didn't want to let go. They gave her some syrup sedative but as soon as they took her away she started crying. As soon as she left the room I started crying. Surgery was about a hour long and then we had to wait another 45 minutes after surgery just to see her.
We're not sure if she remembers what happened or not. Her Dr said the surgery went great. He's pretty sure he got all the infection out but she's still on antibiotics and now Tylenol with Codine for pain. She has a 2 inch incision on her jawline. He said he was sure he did not knick that nerve however we are noticing 2 and 3 days later that side seems to droop when she's smiling. They immediately did tests for lymphoma because that was another possible and there were no cancer or precancerous cells so that was a relief. So now they are doing a bunch of cultures to figure out what's going on. Turns out her other side is also swollen but not visible yet. He thinks this is a Myco bacterium infection but we will not know until next week when we see him since he did this all on his vacation. lol
She is doing well now like nothing ever happened. We are learning how to coax her into letting us do dressing changes on her wound as she has a drain tube sticking out of her incision. She hasn't tried touching it so pretty happy with how that's going. She's starting to give in on the meds because she knows if she doesn't take them we have to sit on her and hold her down. Over 1 month on antibiotics 2 times a day, Steroids were a week, and now a week of Tylenol w/codine several times a day. It's been very stressful but her face looks snow white again, just with stitches, no redness at all which is so nice to see. Her next appointment is Tuesday to have the stitches and drain removed and hopefully we will get some answers on what this is or what's next.