Sickly child

I swear, sometimes I feel like my poor children get the short end of the stick every time. Emma woke up this morning with a huge lump on her throat. It's between her chin & throat, actually. It's swollen & she says it's painful but she may just be acting on that one. But there's no fever, no redness, no other sign of infection. So we made an appointment for this afternoon. After driving halfway to Stockton & realizing that obviously the wonderful, if not always reliable, internet had given me bogus directions, I had to call the doctor's office to push back our appointment by 30 minutes, so I could drive practically back to where I had originally started (the office was 5 minutes from my in-law's house, grrr). The Physician's Assistant we see tells me it's probably a thyroglossal cyst. Huh? Long story short, it's a congenital defect (I hate that word) where something didn't quite finish developing in utero and is now rearing it's ugly head on my daughter's throat. Nice. But, fortunately, it's quite common & can be remedied, either through antibiotics or surgery. The surgery thing scares me, because it's NOT an outpatient thing. Emma would have to be put out with a breathing tube down her throat. She was put under general anesthesia last year for her CT scan when she had Bell's palsy, so I know she probably won't have any adverse reaction to that. It's the breathing tube & the actually cutting of skin that I wouldn't be looking forward to. I definitely could NOT do this while I was here visiting CA. I would need Jeff to be there with me. And I know he would want me to wait until we got home to do it.
So, I get home from the appointment & immediately try to get in contact with an ENT doc to confirm the diagnosis & prescribe treatment. Of course, no ENT doc has ANY appointments for at least a week. Apparently there's always a run on ENT docs, and they never have to beg for patients. So I take the earliest appointment I can, but I'm going to call the places that were closed by the time I called today in the morning & try to get something sooner. The PA said to look for signs of infection, like redness & fever. I thought it was starting to get a little pink this evening, but it could just be that Emma was poking at it.
But, we DID go the zoo this evening. Dave's job was having a special preview of the Touring Termite exhibit & we all got in free. Emma was bummed because they apparently sent their only elephant to the Detroit zoo, and that's the only animal was actually looking forward to seeing. But we still had a blast. She loved the giraffes and the monkeys. The only big cats that were still out in the open were the snow leopards. I think this one might have been hungry because it was sitting about 4 feet from the front of the enclosure and it seemed to be watching Emma like a hawk. Emma would walk back & forth in front of it & it would follow her with it's eyes. Emma walked out of it's field of vision & it actually got up & walked down a few steps to try & find her again. It seemed to be saying, hey that one's little, I could take that one down no problem. But then more people started crowding around & it backed up into it's original spot, like it was saying, oh they're gathering, I think I lost my chance. Too many of them now. It was funny, and kinda scary at the same time. I didn't like the fact that some animal was sizing up my daughter for a meal.