breaking for air

I was feeling fairly good for it being my first week of meds last week and then my little one showed some signs of a minor (but could be major if not taken care of) infection.  I thought our pediatrician would tell us to come into the office and do a quick test and then send us home with antibiotics.

I was wrong.  Their office was just closing (at noon!) so they told me to go to the ER.  All of the sudden I felt dragged down with the possibility of pulling along two little monkeys in the germ infested ER.

Thankfully my husband was able to get off early and take our oldest with him since they had to go to AWANA with her that night anyway.  I thought it would be a simple ER visit with the little one and so I packed for such and held her.....for some time....and then it all started crashing down.

Poor thing did NOT have an infection like I thought but had something else entirely.  It wasn't all together terribly serious but it was enough to warrant an admission to Children's Hospital overnight and for the next day.  So from noon to midnight I was comforting a very uncomfortable little girl until my husband could arrive to take over.  And during that time I was very concerned for the little wee one and mentally trying to figure out where our oldest should go overnight.  All the details were worked out on an almost-dead cell phone.  That is a pile of anxiety!

And by the time all the blood was drawn and I.V was placed and baby was calm and at peace that Mommy and Daddy were by her side, I could feel myself needing to just remove myself from the place and re-charge.  I would have stayed overnight with her but the wisdom of my husband and my gut feeling were both telling me that I needed to go try to get sleep in my own bed to be ready for round two the next day.

And so I did.  When I hit the bed I was shaky and weak and in pain.  The pain, I think, was mostly from holding my little girl all day and in all different positions.  I took my evening meds and slept.

I got up early to try to go relieve my husband before it got too late into the morning and by the time I sat through traffic to get there it wasn't as early as I had hoped.  But things were good.  She wasn't ready to be released yet, but my husband had gotten rest and so had she overnight.  Good news.  He told me to figure out what needed to be done that day that couldn't be rescheduled.  One thing was a routine doctor visit for my eldest.

So I did that but raced through it and raced her back to her gracious babysitters and was anxious about the littlest.  When I got there she had done what she needed to do to even think about getting released so we were all a bit less apprehensive.  She was happy to see me but now was also more perky and was needing of someone to lean over the hospital crib and be with her.  It hurt my back so!  But I wouldn't have NOT done it in a million years!

It was so nice when some of the tubes came out and I was able to sit down and hold her!  We were finally released and our little girl was as good as new.  We took her home and felt exhausted; both of us. I felt so sore, but still, I felt it was from all the holding and uncomfortable chairs.  We've been catching up on exhaustion for days.

It's been 5 days since that all began and I would say the last two days, even though at home, have been really tough on my body.  I tried a mud bath detox (more on that in another post) but ended up feeling awful the next day.  When I went to bed last night I had that feeling where all your organs seem to be inflamed and it took me a while to get into a good deep sleep.

This morning was the first day that I felt I wasn't drowning under water.  Whew!  Thank you, Lord!  I started week 2 of antibiotics today.

Even though I've had some down time and feeling pretty bad, I'd say I'm still thankful that with how much stress all of the long weekend was on my body, I'm bouncing back a lot faster than I used to.  This type of deal a year or two ago would have set me back 2 weeks at the least.

Good job, immune system!  You're learning....and that's precisely what we've been trying to teach you.

I sometimes wish that I could "speed heal" - no distractions, nothing - except the meds and me.  I sometimes wonder what it would be like if maybe I could just heal without the stresses of life.  But that would make me a hermit, right?  You know what?  Healing that way would probably be a lot harder and so much more discouraging.

The way it is now, even though there are set backs and things might not be going as fast as I'd like them to, at least I have loving friends and family to cheer me on and pray for me.  I get great cheer-me-up interaction with my silly kids and funny husband.  I think this is the way to go to heal from this disease :)