Sick little guy

Well as usual, things change. When I left for recurrent on Monday, Jack had what was called a Carbuncle. Its a nasty pus filled thing that kind of looks like a boil. His Dr. tried treating it with a high load of antibiotics and some TLC, but as the week progressed, his "owwweee" as Jack called it, got progressively worse. As we were taking a break in class yesterday, I noticed 4 missed calls, 2 voicemails and a text message. I had my phone on silent, so I didn't notice the calls for a few hours. I immediately know something was wrong and called Erin to find out what was up. Apparently his owwee had gotten swollen and more infected. It was so bad that she brought him in to the hospital. The Doctors decided that it was bad enough that they had to operate. Its the kind of call that nobody wants to hear, especially when you are 2000 miles away and cant be there for your family. As soon as I got off the phone with Erin, I walked over my boss's office and told him of the situation, the first words out of his mouth were "Go Home"! His second action was to immediately get on his computer and find me a flight that would get me home a.s.a.p. (M.M, I cant tell you enough how much I appreciate how you handled the situation.) The next problem we faced was what to do about class. Thankfully I had been studying for a few months and studied hard during the week so the class wasn't a complete waste. I asked if they could bump the checkride up to the next day, but they said they were not able to do that. I then asked if it would be alright for me to take the final right now and that way all I'd have to do is come back to do my sim. They agreed and gave me the test right then and there. I flew through the test in record speed and was on my way back home in less than 20 min.



Here is the owwweee the night before surgery.




Here's the Little Trooper and Mommy before heading to the cutting room.


After scorching through my final, I hustled out the door to grab my stuff from the hotel so I could make my flight home. My company had bought me a "cheap" ticket home on Air Tran, but that would have gotten me home at around 11:00pm. But I knew from experience that Midwest had a direct flight that would have gotten me home by 9:30. I took the gamble and decided to head over to the Midwest counter at DFW. Jumpseating is more of an art form with my company due to the fact that we are not in the CASS system and we only have 2 jumpseat agreements. But thanks to Larry O. and the great guys up front flying the trip back to MKE, they gave me a ride home. I couldn't have been more grateful.

Thankfully Jack pulled through the surgery with flying colors. Currently the fam is spending the night in the hospital while Jack recovers. Hopefully he'll be able to go home tomorrow and will quickly recover.