let me deviate from the subject...

I know this blog is conversations to myself about cooking and my love for food and pictures but I'd like to go a little off-subject. Yesterday, while visiting a friend at a nursing home, I noticed my youngest had a very large lump on her throat. The friend, who had been a nurse for 48 years, took a look at the lump and agreed that wasn't entirely normal. So I did my best to keep my cool and not go into a mommypanicattack and decided we'd go home and quietly call the doctors office. When we arrived for the appointment we were greeted by a very nice nurse practitioner. My first thought was "oh great" a N.P!! I want a doctor!!! However, she put a very worried and scared 5 year old at ease and said that she was going to bring in the on call doctor. So now the 5 year old and the 34 year old were at ease. After a few minutes of hearing the two "discuss" things down the hall, the doctor walked in with a very large medical journal opened to a certain page with a certain drawing of a child's head and many different labels pointing to various regions on the child's head and neck. The first thing he said was that if it is what he thinks it is, everything is all right. Phew! However, I was waiting for the punchline...whenever anything like that is said, there's gotta be more to it. The basics of it is he thinks she has a thyroglossal duct cyst. The only way for it be gone is to remove it surgically. There it was, the punch....my 5 yr old going in for surgery. So, that's where we are right now. We have to bring her to an ENT to have further tests to confirm his diagnosis. He thought we were ok, bringing her home, since she wasn't in any pain, no fever, no redness which means no sign of infection. If these things get infected, its pretty much a nightmare. So, we'll do our best to keep an eye on things and see what this week will bring. My little one is very scared about any type of needles, surgery, etc...so we're trying to make this as "painless" as possible. Trying to make the experience as "fun" as we can. Things like this happen, I suppose, when you least expect it. All you can do is just roll with the punches and do your best to take each and every step.