Spiders

Cool website about Illinois spiders: http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/zoology/spiders/gallery.html

Has great pictures...can't wait to show my boys!

Frustration...

I'm feeling a bit frustrated with the UW-Madison databases. I needed an article for my management class and have decided that the interface they have is NOT user friendly! Talk about frustrating!

Mesenteric Lymphadenitis

Don't know what it is? I didn't either, until today. I learned it after spending 8 hours in the ER with my 5 year old son Ike. He's been running a fever since Sunday, and after the doctor appointment on Monday I thought it would run its course and this would be over. I was wrong.

My son had severe stomach pain from 10:30 AM to approximately 2:30 PM. He finally got relief when the second IV was successfully inserted into his hand (the second one) and they were able to administer pain medication!

Basically, mesenteric lymphadenitis is the inflammation of the lymph nodes in the abdomen. It mimics appendicitis. In fact, the doctor told us that before CAT scans, 20% of people who went to surgery thinking they had appendicitis had mesenteric lymphadenitis. If you want more info you can check it out at: http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/mesenteric-lymphadentitis.

He's doing much better now and I'm proud of how brave he was today! He endured all kinds of things today including drinking 600 ml of contrast material, having 2 IV's, a CAT scan, and a ton load of pain and after all that he still wanted his Grandma to take him to the dollar store (which they had planned on doing after his doctor appointment). Gotta love kids!

Templates

Last week I finally figured out how to make templates work for my library's website in Dreamweaver. Today, I changed all my webpages to work with the templates so updating the menu bar on the site will be a piece of cake now instead of the task I dread so much! Yeah! The best part of all...I learned how to do it before my dad (who also writes a website and has learned far more than me already)! I totally enjoy being able to teach him how to do something - since it happens so rarely!

Fever!

I was up most of the night with my 5 year-old who was having some kind of stomach trouble. It started around 3 PM and by the time he went to bed he had a slight fever and several bouts of screaming from tummy-ache (I thought he had gas). Not wanting him to wake his older brother up during the night, I let him sleep with us. We were up three times between 10 PM and 3 AM. Not fun! I did learn some very interesting things after midnight last night about the symptoms of several abdominal ailments from gastric trouble to appendicitis. Thanks WebMD.com! I used the symptom checker for awhile but my son couldn't tell me if his pain was sharp, dull, or just felt like pressure. When I tried to explain pressure...okay, I probably should have thought of something better...I asked if he felt like his tummy was going to explode...I was tired! That just scared him and then he started screaming...Mommy, don't let my tummy explode! It would have been nice if the symptom checker (which asks what age you are checking for) gave suggestions for how to explain the symptoms in regards to the age group. In a perfect world. Anyway, he went to the doctor today and he either has food poisoning or a virus. When his brother got off the bus with a stomachache and slight fever I didn't need WebMD to tell me...it's a virus!