My son Todd got this sudden lump on his neck. It appeared one night right before bedtime, and looked like a spider bite. By early morning it was the size and feel of a soft-boiled egg. He wasn’t in any pain and not feverish, so I held off rushing him to the emergency room and waited until the doctor’s office opened to call them. By then he did have a fever, and so I made an appointment for that morning. Going to the doctor was an adventure in and of itself! Tons of little kids with masks on. The place was packed.

Todd, to be funny, told me the lump on his neck was an alien parasite. He said this with a straight face, then he laughed manically. I don’t know who he gets his sense of humor from more; me or Brian So Todd’s ‘alien parasite’ neck lump turned out to be an infection in one of his lymph nodes. He was in the hospital from Oct.22-26th and went back to school on the 29th. Mostly back up to speed by the 30th and enjoyed Halloween.

It was such an experience! We took him to the doctor and next thing, he’s being admitted to the hospital for possible surgery. It turned out all they had to do was give him extra strength antibiotics via IV for a few days, then home to continue treatment by pills. He finished up the pills last week, thank god. This infection can be caused by all sorts of things, but without a culture from the actual infected lymph node they couldn’t tell what specific bacteria caused it. Since they couldn’t do that without actual cutting (there was no fluid per se so they couldn’t drain it) we declined. It can be caused by staph, strep (though strep was ruled out via throat culture), even a cat scratch can trigger it. Since he just got over the flu a few days prior to this happening the docs suspect it was a case of his immunity still being so low when he got infected with this.

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