So maybe my mind isn't so powerful after all

To those of you who have requested good weather, good health, promotions, raises, and chocolate donuts: I'm sorry to report that my mind isn't as frighteningly powerful as I had imagined.

Mary doesn't have MRSA. In fact, she doesn't have a staph infection at all. It is a relief to know that my children aren't going to get every strange disease about which I happen to think briefly.

(But there was this one time that my friend was hospitalized with a kidney infection and then a week later I started having pain in my lower back and I started to worry that I too had a kidney infection but then I thought no that's crazy I am just imagining the pain because I am thinking about kidney infections and I forced myself not to worry about it and then a few days later I was collapsed and puking at the clinic with a raging KIDNEY INFECTION and that is when I began to wonder about the potential power of my worry.)

So what, then, does Mary have, you may be asking? (Or not asking, because maybe you don't care. But, really, if you don't care deeply and passionately about the bumps on my daughter's leg, this isn't the blog for you.)

It's a veritable MEDICAL MYSTERY. (Even my parents' friend the seasoned doctor was highly intrigued upon hearing about Mary's medical mystery. I guess Mary's combination of symptoms is pretty weird.)

It's not an allergic reaction. It's not a bacterial infection. So that leaves...a viral infection? Too bad it's not presenting in the right way and in the right places to be viral. After the pediatrician and his colleague examined, inspected, poked, prodded, took cultures, pulled out the lighted magnifying glass head-gear, and studied their medical manuals, they sent us away with an intense anti-viral treatment (every six hours on the dot--how I love to wake my children up at three in the morning, don't you?), a referral to a dermatologist first thing Monday morning, and strict instructions to take her the hospital if it worsened over the weekend.

By the way, I am not worried. (Thank goodness! Who knows what damage my worrying could do to the situation.) Perhaps I should be panicked because when we left the pediatrician Friday afternoon, he was somewhat baffled and somewhat worried. But I found it comforting that he admitted he wasn't sure what it was, that he spent a good deal of unhurried time with us, and that he took steps to help us figure out what's going on (and then we'll all know how worried we should be).

The good news is that Mary is cuddled up next to David here at home and not in a hospital bed. That means those 3 am wake-ups have been working. (In fact, I've never seen a medication work so fast!)

The bad news is...well, I don't know what the bad news is. Other than the fact that I'm setting my alarm for 3 am again tonight. I suppose it's up to the dermatologist to tell us the bad news (or good news!) tomorrow morning.

[I feel like we're in an episode of House, minus the fancy hospital, the troubled limping doctor, the cleavage, the crisis of faith, the white board, the attractive residents peering under my sink, the incorrect diagnosis of sarcoidosis, and...wait. This doesn't feel like House at all. Phew.]