Go To The End Of The Road, Turn Left

The title of this post are the cliche directions that people sarcastically give when you need to go to Boulder, CO…funny thing is that you actually have to turn right to get into the downtown. More on Boulder in a little while. So there was no post done yesterday, are you doing okay? Any withdrawals? I suppose that we are allowed a day off of the blog every once in a while – it simply turned out to be a pretty busy day – but this longer post should make up for it.  

On Sunday morning we all awoke to find some yellow stuff in the corner of Ezra’s right eye. We spent most of the day bouncing back-and-forth between wiping it away, researching on the internet as to the problem, and worrying about how he was feeling. We came to the conclusion that it was probably a blocked tear duct and not a dire emergency; but decided to call the ‘after hours’ line at our pediatricians office anyway. The nurse consulted with us and told us basically the same thing that we were thinking, along with the strong recommendation that we head into the doctor’s office the next morning – just to be sure of the problem and due to his age. The puss and swelling gradually got worse throughout the day, then turned for the better over the night….however, every time that we let it go for more than a hour (mostly due to the fact that we were asleep), his eye glued itself together. Generally speaking, he did a great job with his first ‘illness’ and wasn’t too difficult to deal with. True enough, there were moments of near inconsolability, but that’s to be expected.

Yesterday morning we diligently headed to the doctor’s office at 0830 because that is the time that their phone answering machine said they opened…alas, the people that work there think it’s closer to 0900 – so they changed the signage on the door. After getting some coffee, we went back to the office only to discover that they don’t take walk-in’s. AARRGGHH. We never saw any mention of “appointments only” on anything: not on the phone message, not on their brochure, not on their web site. Oh yea, they don’t have a web site (!). For those of you who own businesses out there – and I don’t care how big or small – that don’t have a web site yet…please join the 21st century (e-mail me, and I will help you create one for a small fee). Anyway, when we were there, the receptionist told us that this was an extremely common problem and that we probably wouldn’t need to come back for an appointment and waste a co-pay; a nurse would call us. She did (about 30 minutes later, back to great service!) and gave us some more home remedy instructions…which to this point seem to have worked just fine. As the day progressed, his eye seems to have gotten better, and the progress continued this morning. Hopefully the tear duct will clear itself over the next day or four and we won’t have to resort to antibiotics. 

Back to Boulder. We needed out of the house and a destination to aim for. Originally, we intended on going up into the mountains, but those plans were changed with the eye situation. So after the phone call with the nurse, we drove up to Boulder and spent the afternoon there. We had lunch at a favorite spot – Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery – and wandered the Pearl Street shops for a couple of hours. The rain held off just long enough for us to enjoy the afternoon and we headed home before the Denver traffic heated up. It was good to get out and about and we are looking forward to doing more of that in the next couple of days. 

Speaking of the next couple of days: my cousin, Gil, arrives this afternoon from Israel! He is coming to the US for some military training in Pennsylvania, but decided to come out here and visit us for a couple of days before the training starts. More on his trip in the next couple of posts. 

One more thing, the countdown to my return to work has begun. I ended up taking an extra tour off of work on FMLA, so I will return a week from Friday. It is still 10 days away, but already difficult to imagine not being here for every great moment.