Update.

I just spent 4 1/2 hours at the hospital with two tired, miserable kids. I don't have enough energy to write a big long explanation, but that's ok because I don't really have one anyway. Here's how it went:

The doctor listened to Joshua's heart for a long time. He asked me if any doctor had ever told me he has a heart murmur. I said no, and he said that it could be new. (Great.) He asked if Josh had ever had a throat infection. I told him about the time his face was swollen (a month or so ago, see the blog and pictures here). He said it could have been the same thing. He ordered:

An EKG
About six billion blood tests
A throat culture
& x-rays.

Josh had a fit, screamed and hit the nurse who tried to take his throat culture. He nearly had a nervous breakdown over the EKG (he thought it was going to be needles), and don't even get me STARTED on the blood-drawing.

Ok, I lied. I'm going to talk about the blood drawing. I talked to him about it for like half an hour before they called our name at the lab, and he was really scared. But by the end of our conversation he seemed like he was going to be ok with it. I strapped Asher in the stroller, but we had already been at the hospital for about 3 hours, so he was hysterical about being strapped in and just wanted to go home. When we got into the lab chair, Josh freaked out, screaming "I don't want you to do that! Please don't put that needle in me! No, I don't want you to do that! Take it away!" It was SO SAD. The girls who were doing it were REALLY nice, which was a HUGE blessing, because when nurses (or whatever they are) aren't empathetic about my son's anxiety, I get a little crazy. Anyway, they stuck him with the needle twice, wiggled it around for like 8 minutes (ok, maybe it was 1), and finally decided his veins were way too small. They called in their Sergeant, who tried also, and he couldn't get it. Josh kept crying and screaming, it was so awful. Finally, the Sergeant guy said there's a flobotomist (I'm guessing at the spelling) that has been doing it for like 40 years and she comes back on Tuesday. We agreed to leave it alone and come back Tuesday to try again with the pro lady.

I got back to the doctor's office, by then we'd been in the hospital for 4 hours, so both kids were completely out of their minds and Josh's leg was really hurting him... The doctor made us wait another half an hour, then he finally came in and told me he was probably going to have to admit Josh to the ER for a knee tap. I didn't know what that meant, but he finally produced the words "needle" and "fluid" and I was pretty much ready to die. My kids were exhausted and Josh had had enough poking and prodding for one day. He said he was going to go speak to the chief of medicine and ask his opinion. He finally came back and said we weren't going to have to be admitted, but we do have to come back first thing in the morning to get the blood drawn (the doctor says he's going to do it himself, which is NOT the best news I've ever heard) and get the knee tap thing done.

So, that's it. I'm exhausted, the kids are exhausted, we have NO answers about what's wrong with him, and he has a heart murmur. Fantastic.