This TRUE story below comes to us from one of our readers in hopes to educate all of our readers about a condition called Osteomyelitis. Thank you to Lori from Little Rock, Arkansas for sharing her story below:
Gage’s story
My son, who is normally a very happy, agreeable two year old, began being really cranky on a Tuesday night. On Thursday morning, he ran a fever so I took him to the doctor, who said there was nothing she could find, including ear infection, strep throat, all the “normal” things. So all we could do was wait it out. The fever went away. On Saturday morning, he woke up and would not bend his right knee. I figured, he is two and a boy, he banged it on something, although there was no sign of injury. I went on to work that night.
Later that night, my husband called me and said his knee felt warm and looked swollen. I told some of my friends about it, looking for clues as to what the deal was. One of my friends (my lifesaver), worked in the ER at our children’s hospital before transferring to my unit, and she told me that it could be osteomyelitis, an infection in the bone, and that I should take him into the ER. So, as soon as I got home on Sunday morning, we went.
We ended up there for a week, ended up having surgery, a bone scan, xrays, IV antibiotics, and went home with a cast for two weeks and antibiotics for 4 weeks, and weekly lab draws. Luckily, thanks to my friend, he did not develop osteomyelitis, instead it stayed in his knee since we caught it early enough. Had we waited, it would have spread and he could have potentially lost his leg from it. As it is, we should have no lasting effects from it, he is running around and fine now.
The doctors told me that they are seeing this a lot now, and usually parents do not bring the kids in as early as we did, for the same reasons that I might not have, age, activity, so forth…again, there was no sign of injury at all to his knee. The doctors said it just happens randomly, you cannot do anything to either cause or prevent it, it usually develops from a cold or strep or something like that. He was actually tested for strep and it was negative. Two days after we came home, my 4 year old came down with strep, so we assume now that he had strep that was undiagnosed or that was never in his throat.
So, the point of me passing this along to all the moms is this…..if your child shows any indication of pain in a knee, ankle, or hip, take them in right away if there is no obvious injury to the area. The doctors asked me to pass this information along to my friends, cause this is much easier to treat if you catch it early enough, and it is more common than you would think. You could save your child a lot of trouble and pain down the road. Trust me, I never thought anything like this would happen to one of my children. They stay at home with me, no daycare, I take them to the doctor at the first sign of illness…but it still happened to Gage.
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