Strep or Mono?!?!?!?!

YEP, I spent my friday night at the ER!!!
Grab your coffee and prepare yourself, this is going to be a LONG one.

So Jasmine gets home from school yesterday and everything is fine, she's ok, she's running around with Nicholas and having fun.

Gets to about 4pm and I'm feeling REALLY sick, I honestly felt like I needed to throw up and my stomach hurt.

Now it's happened many times before where, the minute I say I'm not feeling well, the kids start walking around going "I don't feel good, I'm sick."
When Jasmine says to me "I don't feel good, my throat hurts", I didn't think anything of it, I thought well, she is either developed the instant sickness because I'm not feeling well, OR, it could be that she's getting a cold or something. I tell her I'm sorry she doesn't feel well, and go about my business.

We sit down at the dinner table and each take a bite of our dinner. I look over at Jasmine and notice this HUGE lump on the right side of her throat, right underneath her ear. Her gland looked extremely swollen. So now I'm sitting there staring and thinking "what the heck, is that the light making a shadown or creating an illusion or something". She wasn't complaining at that point, she was laughing etc.
I get up, walk over to her and lift her hair away only to be met by this huge lump. I touch it and she yells at me that it hurts, please don't touch.

Oh GREAT, now I'm panicking, you know how the mommy instinct kicks in and you start imagining all these horrific things. I pick up the phone and call Curt at work, but of course, I should remember that this is the military and unless someone is dying, they won't let him off work for something this small. Doesn't hurt to try thought, right?

So I gather up the kids, leave the dinner on the table and off we go to the hospital ER. Let me tell you that if there is one thing I totally detest doing is going to the ER especially with kids. I knew this was going to suck because Nicholas had to go with me.

We get there and there is NO ONE else at the ER, so I'm thinking "we might actually get out of here quick". WRONG. I check my watch, it's 5:05pm. We wait for about 10 minutes and then get seen by the nurse, get the blood pressure, temperature, listen to the heart yadda yadda yadda.
Go in to the little cubicle and the wait begins. We honestly looked like the freak family, Jasmine is laying on the gurney with a huge lump on her throat and moaning that she doesn't feel good. I'm sitting on the gurney next to her looking green and pale and about to get sick. Nicholas is running around touching everything, trying to pull everything down and just NOT listening.
After about 40 minutes the doctor finally comes in and checks her out, he keeps pushing on her lump and she keeps crying out and telling him that it really hurts. So I have to fight the mommy instant to tell him to "BACK OFF", I just tell Jasmine that I'm right there and that unfortunately he has to touch it and feel it to see what it is. He gets up and asks a couple more questions, then says "well we need to test for a few things, Strep Throat and Mono".
COME AGAIN?!?!?!?! Let's face it neither of these tests are easy to do or comfortable for the child.

"The nurse will be right with you" he says, and walks out. Wait another 25 minutes. Here comes the nurse, who might I add was absolutely WONDERFUL with Jasmine. Loved her and she made Jasmine feel very comfortable, she was one of those people who are definitely cut out for this. Anyway, she comes in and tells Jasmine what she has to do, and my princess says "I'll do the blood test first". She holds on to my hand and she is shaking and has tears in her eyes, and that was it for me, I thought I was going to burst into tears. She was SO GOOD through it, she kept her arm still, didn't cry once although she did keep repeating "it really hurts, please take it out now".
So that is done, and now we move onto the strep throat test. HERE WE GO......my daughter is like me, I don't like having things shoved down my throat, I would rather take blood over and over. The nurse approaches her with the swab and Jasmine panicks "NO NO I don't want to do that, I dont' want that down my throat". So we explain it's not going all the way down the throat, just by her tickler and the nurse even shows her her own tickler so she can see. After 5 minutes we convince her to stick her tongue out and open her mouth, nurse goes in and Jasmine's mouth SNAPS shut like a crocodile. LOL
Oh boy, this is going to take a while!!!

Let's just say that it took 20 minutes to get the two swabs and then another 20 minutes to get the other 2. Now the waiting game begins. I look at my watch, it's 7pm. Usually by this time, the kids are both getting ready for bed, so they both start getting cranky. Oh and by this time, Jasmine is now running a fever, she's really hot BUT the ER won't give her anything because when she first got there her temperature was only 99.1. WTH?????

Anyway, I take them to the snack bar, call my husband and go back to waiting. Finally the strep throat results come in "POSITIVE", she has strep throat. There's a lot of it going around here, lots of kids at the school have it. She is now on penicillin for 10 days.....the doctor told her she can do the antibiotics for 10 days or just get a one time shot on her behind and be done with it. She refused the shot LOL No thanks doc, keep the needles to yourself!!!
The Mono results were going to take a couple of hours, so we came home, walked in the door at 8:10pm. Gave them their baths and they went straight to sleep.

So THAT was my wonderful friday night. I'm happy to report though that they called us back later that night and told us the test for Mono was negative. THANK GOD!!!
We caught the strep right as it was starting too, so she wasn't having pain just the swollen gland. Doctor said it's only contagious before you start taking the antibiotics and only if you eat or drink from the same utensils, and as long as she is not running a fever, she's allowed to go out of the house. DOCTOR MOM though says, NOPE, she's perfectly fine staying at home. :)

And with that, I am done. I know I know, this was a LONG post, but just wanted to let everyone know what my evening was like. Well better go pour some more coffee, this one is ice cold and the cereal I had ready to eat is now really soggy, which does not appeal to me at all.

Rise and shine everyone, it's a beautiful crisp saturday morning. I have errands to run so I will be back later. Until then, stay safe and stay warm :)