Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Life Changers

On our way to Virginia a few weeks ago, Dave and I had a good discussion about life changing events in our lives. Events and people, actually. It was fun and interesting to discuss how things and people have changed us and perhaps alterred the path we were heading down.

Although I don't think we discussed it, 4 years ago today we had one such situation. On December 23, 2005 our little 6 1/2 week old Georgia was very sick and admitted to the hospital. I wrote about it in her journal - here are 3 entries from that time:

December 18, 2005 - You are 5 1/2 weeks. For the last 3 nights you have slept from 8:30ish until 8am with a very brief feeding (15-20 minutes at most) at 11pm. Amazing! You have a cold right now and have breathing treatments with the nebulizer twice a day. You are on a good 4 hour schedule - 8, 12, 4, 8, 11 and you take three 2 1/2 hour naps each day. Your sisters love you and always want to see you, hug you and touch you. You have been a very good baby and are so sweet. You have crazy hair! Its dark and at least 2 inches long and stands up straight. Everyone comments on it when they see you. You may have been a surprise, but you were, by far, the best surprise ever. We love you so much, Bug!

December 24, 2005 - It is your first Christmas Eve and you are in the hospital. Your cold seemed to get better throughout the week, but you had a very persistent cough, especially throughout the night. For the last few nights you would cough for about 4 minutes every 2 hours. I was getting less sleep than when you first came home. You were kind of lethargic at the beginning of the week, but you got better everyday. On Thrusday you were much better - eating every 4 hours, alert and more active. Thursday night you coughed all night so I called Dr. C to find out if there was any medication I could give you since we were going away for the weekend. He told me to bring you in to see him. When he listened to you lungs he decided you needed to be in the hospital. By that time I was already worried - I woke you at 8am to eat, you were back down at 9:15, I tried to wake and feed you at noon, but you hardly woke up and hardly ate, you were awake for 10 minutes in the doctor's office, but you basically slept from 9:15am - 5:30pm. I also noticed that your ribs were sucking in with each breath and your color was not good. We took you to Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn. They gave you breathing treatments, suctioned you, gave you steroids and antibiotics. You slept most of the day and night. They did a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia and tested for RSV & parainfluenza. The RSV & para. tests came back negative. Dr. K visited this morning and thought you had pneumonia and ordered a consult by a pulmonologist. He came and listened to your lungs & looked at the chest x-ray and determined you have viral pneumonia & there really isn't any treatment for that. Soooo... you're currently getting a large dosage of antibiotics, they'll see how you react & then you can probably come home tonight - yea! We initially thought you'd be here for 3-5 days. You'll be home for Christmas! You scared us, Bug. You weren't doing well at all yesterday. It was hard for you to breathe & you were sleeping so much, but today you're doing so much better - 180 degrees. We are so thrilled to be bringing you home tonight & to have our bug back.

December 30, 2005 - You are a completely different baby. On Tuesday night you slept from 8:30 - 5:45, ate for 10 minutes & then back down until 8. When I woke you up at 8 you were totally different - you were cooing & you smiled for the first time. Your arms and legs were flying all over & you were so animated. These are all very normal baby things at 7 weeks, but hadn't seen you act like that in 2 weeks. It was then that I really knew that you had been sick for a while. That whole week I had just thought that you weren't quite "right" but I couldn't identify exactly why - but now I can. All day I would cry when I saw you being normal. I had been so nervous, scared & upset for 2 weeks & now you're just you again. We're so happy that you're home & feeling better.


This morning I was telling Georgia about that day. I started crying. It was very scary and upsetting and I remember how I felt while we were going through it. I probably haven't thought about it in a couple of years.

Obviously Georgia is a very healthy and precocious 4 year old. She is awesome - most of the time;) So no worries there. Because of that situation we didn't head off onto a path of health issues and related worries. That situation, though, was the catalyst to a significant change for our family and for me and Dave individually. It was an incredibly painful change that took years to heal. I hated most of it and hated how I felt about it, but 4 years later I am able to look back and give much thanks and praise for that change.

I think the change would have come regardless of Georgia's illness, however, this situation resulted in being a deal breaker. Had we not had this specific situation in our life, I think the pain would have been drawn out, the change would have been more wish-washy in nature and we would probably have more regrets.

So while the pain of this day 4 years ago is still fresh to me, I'm thankful for that pain. I'm thankful for the results of that rawness. I'm also thankful for the reminder of what was, what happened and what resulted. God is good.

2 comments:

Amy 10:45 AM  

It is so difficult when our kids are sick or injured and we're so helpless. It shows us how all things needs to be surrendered to God who hold us in His hands.

Skooks 10:39 AM  

How completely scary that must have been. Naomi had a weird reaction to something once and we took her to the ER when she was less than 9 months old. I don't think I've ever been so terrified in my whole life.

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