Ups and Downs

I was really looking forward to sleeping in this morning, then enjoying a super leisurely family breakfast, and then spending as much of the afternoon as possible out in the sun, since the forecast all week predicted a beautiful day. And indeed, it was a beautiful day. But the morning didn't go quite as planned.

The trouble started yesterday, really. My second daughter, who had all her wisdom teeth pulled three weeks ago, awoke on Saturday morning with a badly swollen face and terrible pain - an obvious infection. Being Germany, access to doctors on weekends is extremely limited. I called around to locate the city's scheduled emergency dentist and my husband whisked her off to see him as I was preparing the surprise party I was hosting. When they returned, I was a bit dismayed that he had not drained the abscess or prescribed any antibiotics?! He just put an ointment on the inflamed gums and told her to continue such treatment three times a day. Needless to say I was skeptical it would do much good - but who am I to question the medical expert and where else was I to go at that point?

Sure enough, early this morning, I had a feverish crying daughter whose face had doubled in size. This time I called the hospital and they referred me to another hospital that had a mouth and jaw surgery clinic - and urged me to get her there right away. It took us a bit of time to find the place and then we still had to wait over an hour to be seen, but sure enough, they needed to drain the infected area and gave her an oral antibiotic and pain meds, with instructions to return every day for the next 4 days to get the wound inspected and redrained as needed. When I showed the hospital doc what the ER dentist had given me... he said "you can feed that stuff to the dog." Yippee.

We were home from this adventure at noon, by which time I'd still not had breakfast. But after a quick lunch, I convinced my elder daughter and husband to go for a walk along the river. That turned into a wonderful 2 1/2 hour outing, which included picking up ice cream cones from a downtown counter, and stopping for drinks at one of the beer gardens. We covered only about 6 miles, but with temps of 21 C (nearly 70 F) and blissful sunshine, it was oh so beautiful to be out and about!

Daughter number two, however, hunkered on the sofa and only had some chicken noodle soup. Tomorrow she is back at the doctor at 8am. Poor thing.