Sterling scared the tee-total out of all of us...

Wednesday August 13th Sterling woke up complaining about a sore wrist, which nobody much paid any attention to at the time. By that afternoon however, Chance came to tell me that Sterling was laying on the lawn crying because his arm hurt. He had a BAD night, and his parents took him to walk-in care the next morning, where he basically was patted on the head and sent home. However, he had a ROTTEN night that night and yelped if anyone touched his arm so back in they went Friday morning. Different doctor, a lady, who after tests, etc., said he had a staph infection in his arm and admitted him to the hospital and hooked him up to IVs feeding him antibiotics. By Sunday morning he was worse, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed sobbing. Scott called me (I was on the train headed for home) and asked what he should do and I said, quit dinking around with walk-in care doctors and GET A SPECIALIST. So they did. Sterling had to have an operation as soon as they could work him into the line on Monday morning the 18th. About 1 yesterday afternoon, they did surgery—Christy was his nurse. much to the family's relief. Sterling had a 5” abscess running along his arm bone, which they removed, cleaned up, etc. The specialist told Scott & Staci that Sterling has a rare bone disease which he sees in Billings a couple times a year. The disease manifests itself in staph infections in the bone. When treated aggressively with antibiotics, the vast majority heal up and never experience any reoccurrence. A few have ongoing problems. Sterling was in the hospital for five days. He will be on anti-biotics for 6 weeks with weekly blood tests, and they won’t know if he’s out of the woods for six months. SCARY. As of today, the 25th, he feels great. He's still wearing a bandage but says his arm doesn't hurt at all. He is missing the first week of school just to be cautious.