Cold Spaghetti

Poor Will.

The Little Man is on antibiotics for a raging ear infection. We have to hide the stuff in his oatmeal, lest he taste it and gag until he vomits (have I mentioned that taking medicine, no matter how “tasty,” is NOT one of my son’s strong suits?) The antibiotics have caused diarrhea. The diarrhea has caused a sudden and severe step back from our potty-training process. Additionally, the diarrhea has caused sores, which has further pushed back potty-ing since Will now fears anything that may result in the taking off of his diaper. The kid is seriously having a rough week.

It was a nice evening, so we decided to take a walk down the street and get the poor kid a burger (his favorite thing in the world). When suddenly, he informed us that he couldn’t walk… or sit… or bend at all… because his penis hurt. During a diaper change 30 minutes or so earlier, we’d noticed that the tip looked a little red. Will overheard our discussion. We thought that his complaint “my penis hurts” stemmed from our conversation and was not unlike the other complaints we regularly hear about pain tragically striking random toenails, elbows, and locks of hair. Usually, the point is to annoy us to the edge of sanity, where we forget the whole burger thing and go right for pudding. When his complaint took on a sharp edge and brought on tears, we perked up and investigated.

GOOD GRACIOUS. The poor kid’s penis is huge. As I find the whole infant mutilation thing unsettling (no offense to those with religious convictions) Will is not circumcised. In addition, well… let’s just say he’ll never need a sports car to compensate for anything. And for Will, that means a decent amount of space to be sore. His whole shaft is swollen, lop-sided and round. And it hurts. It even looks like it hurts. Enough to make him cry if he sits or puts pressure on it.

I called the doctor. Her feeling was that it may be a reaction to the combination of acidic diarrhea and antibiotics, causing his penis to swell. We gave him Tylenol (hidden in oatmeal, of course) and put him to bed — after convincing him that the covers wouldn’t hurt his poor little “pee-nus.” The plan is to check it tomorrow and if it isn’t back to normal, bring him in to be seen.

Meanwhile, I am trying to find that helpful, reassuring information webpage that says it is perfectly normal for a 3-year-old’s penis to swell like a boudin sausage for no apparent reason in less than 30 minutes. So far, no luck. It’s not the easiest thing to research, either. Just consider the terms you have to use. By now, I must have popped up as a suspicious weird-o on some FBI sting list. Wonderful.