Cardinal Glennon Here We Come (Again)!

So, this weekend started off just as any other. Friday rolled around and we were exhausted. Despite my exhaustion, I decided to putz around on the good ol' internet for a bit before bed. I decided to check out what was happening on Babycenter. I clicked on a thread--one that I almost didn't even bother with. Here's the article that I found.

As soon as I read the article and saw the photo of the little girl, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. You see, we have these photos of Miss Riley (among several others), which show the same type of phenomenon in not one, but both of her eyes:
I have spent many an hour on the computer messing with the red eye function trying to get rid of this to no avail, so as soon as I read that article I had a minor panic attack. Then we did what any good, self-respecting parents would do. Caleb and I spent a few hours online trying to research retinal blastoma. After a while, I couldn't deal with the information overload anymore, so I tried to go to bed. Caleb kept on looking up information, and found that this cancer is typically diagnosed in young children around Riley's age, that it is usually quite treatable, but oftentimes, patients lose their eyes and treatment can cause brain tumors.

The next morning, I called an optometrist's office (one of the few that was actually open on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend) and told them my story. Now, I was completely expecting them to tell me that I was just being a psychotic, over-reacting, nervous mom. (I'm sure that those of you reading this right now are probably thinking along those same lines. It's okay--you don't have to admit it. I know that I'm "that mom", and I've resigned myself to that label. It's okay.) Well, instead of condescending to me, the receptionist puts a doctor on the phone to speak directly with me. So my heart's beating 90 to nothing while I tell the optometrist my story. She basically tells me that she doesn't even need to see Riley, and that we need to get her eyes checked by an opthamologist right away!!! This was NOT what they were supposed to be saying to me! I realize that it's in their best interests to cover their rears, but, seriously!

So, Caleb calls our pediatrician's office to ask them to call ahead to Cardinal Glennon, which they do. (Sidebar--we should actually have the Cardinal Glennon Children's hospital number programmed into our speed dial and they should have our names on a plaque somewhere in that hospital. Something should be named after us, what with all the visits we've made there over the course of the last 3 years.) We got ourselves cleaned up, dressed, packed and into the mom-mobile. We stopped and grabbed the kids some lunch and off we went for another excruciating--I mean, exciting--trip to the ER.

Well, Saturday was a beautiful day. This means more opportunities for little ones to be outside getting injured, and more trips to the ER. Since Riley was not bleeding or broken, we were understandably the low men (women? children?) on the totem pole. We waited in the main wating room for about an hour, which really isn't bad. (Although, it's kind of pathetic that we have enough of a frame of reference to know the difference between a "good" ER wait versus a "bad" one.) Then, we saw the triage nurse, who acted like we were idiots for even having internet access in our house (now that's more like it). Then she moved us to an exam room where we waited another hour to see a resident. (Thank heavens we had the forethought to bring our portable dvd player in with some of the kids' faorite shows!) The resident did what we asked about in the first place and told us that Riley needed to be seen by an opthamologist. (REALLY?!?!? You don't say...) So we waited some more.

About another hour later, two eye doctors came into the room and tormented my daughter by looking in her eyes with a flashlight and then putting dilating drops into her eyes. They waited 20 minutes or so for the drops to do their job and came back. This time, they brought in the heavy artilary. He had a mask with a bright light on it to see into her pupils. Well, Riley was having none of that. She kicked and screamed and cried. After about half an hour of 4 adults holding down a 2 year old, the doctors finally saw what they needed to see. Or, more precisely, what they didn't need to see. As far as they could tell, Riley is cancer-free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were discharged with instructions to see a pediatric opthamologist within a few weeks. He will have better methods of looking into the eyes of an unwilling 2 year old and he will be able to get better looks from more angles. So I guess we're not 100% out of the woods just yet. But it looks good so far.

And that is the story of how the new wing of Cardinal Glennon was named after it's most frequent ER patient, Riley Zustiak.

The End.

PS--If you're the praying type, please offer up a few prayers of thanks and pray that we get equally good results from our next eye doctor visit.