SharonAndAdam.com

Happy Easter

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad!

Happy Easter everyone. We hope that you were blessed with wonderful day full of family, friends and good food!

We went to Easter Mass at St. Louis, our parish. It was SO beautiful…and standing room only. I wish that many people would go every Sunday! Then we had Easter dinner at our house and invited 16 of our closest friends. I cooked a turkey for the first time in my life. It came out GREAT! The ham on the other had and a thin black layer that sealed in the juices.;) It was still edible, but I’m still trying to clean the roasting pan! OH, and then we made tiramisu for the first time ever. It came out quite yummy. It was quite the hit.

After some good amount of fellowshipping, we took the girls out to look for Easter Egg. My friend Misty and I filled some plastic eggs will nice yummy snacks like cheese and pretzel fish and fruit puffs. Therese and her friends Anna and Grace went out to the front yard wilth baskets in hand. Only Therese understood that she had to actually fill the baskets with eggs and did quite well. It was quite funny! Everyone thought I had practiced with her. Truth be told, I did try to practice once, but she only looked at me funny and left all the eggs all over the house.

It’s days like this filled we our friends that remind me how blessed we are!

Our Night at the Hospital

Tuesday night we wisked Therese away to the Emergency Room at The Children’s Hospital of Austin. That day, she threw up after taking only a couple of bites of her lunch. At first I thought she might have gagged on a piece of her pasta and that’s what made everything else come up. Nope! After a couple of attempts to feed her again, and after being thrown up on 4 times, I gathered it might be more serious than that. It is truly very difficult at Therese’s age to know what hurts and what’s going on since she can’t speak.

I called our pediatrician’s office and the nurse said that I needed to give a tablespoon of water every hour and increse the volume gradually. She also said that if Therese didn’t have a wet diaper in 8 hours that it could be a sign of dehydration. Since Therese had fallen asleep, I couldn’t give her anything to drink. And when she woke up, she seemed fine. After giving her more water, she vomitted again…and again. She hadn’t had that wet diaper either. By 7 p.m. I paged the nurse again. She told me if Therese couldn’t hold water down to take her to the ER. I called Adam to come home and we got to the ER a little after 8 p.m.

Boy was it PACKED! I have a new found respect for the staff that works ER. It was crazy. Not only were there so many SICK kids, but there were so many anxious parents. Now, I despise germs. Can you imagine how my skin was crawling!! But the staff…their job is to keep cool…and they did. That was impressive.

When we got there, they told us it should be a two hour wait. They gave us some pedialyte and told us to try to give her some. She was taking it for a while…then up it came. So we had to stop. Ten o’clock rolled around…then 10:30…I asked Adam to go ask how much longer…but then he shied away as another parent was chastised for demanding the wait be shorter. Eleven o’clock…Therese was asleep in our arms….we were praying a rosary. After our rosary after seen the upteenth person who came after us go in…I went up to the desk. I kindly asked where we were in line…5th–in the group of children with Therese’s condition! I asked if they could check her vital signs again because it seemed she was getting worse. Now she had a fever. They gave her something to bring it down.

Fifth…boy, but I looked at some of the other kids I could tell were in Therese’s same boat. They didn’t look good either. Finally, our name got called. It was midnight. When the doctor finally saw us, he said she was probably dehydrated (duh!–and we’re going to pay and arm and a leg for info we already knew). They gave her an IV, and drew some blood. The IV ran its course. The nurse came back and said Therese was severely dehydrated so they were going to run another. Then they put in a catheder to draw some urine to check for a kidney/bladder infection. All this was killing us and poor Therese just wanted to be held.

Finally we saw the doctor again. He was admitting Therese into the Children’s Hospital overnight. At 3:30 a.m. we were finally moved to room. We arrived only to have to answer a ton of questions, and instructions. I think we finally fell asleep at 4:30 a.m. The doctors and nurses were wonderful and very sympathetic to two exhausted parents and a sick little girl.

At about 7:30, Therese woke up. She was so hot. She had a fever again. We were instructed to start liquids again. She wouldn’t be able to go home until she was keeping food down and urinating. Only a year ago we were counting her feedings and wet diapers. Now here we were again.

She finally started to perk up. She had a bowel movement. The doc need that to run some tests. The doctor, Dr. Holt, let us make the call of whether she was well enough to come home. He said she probably has rhotovirus (sp?) and that we could expect diarrea in the next phase. However it wasn’t something that would keep her at the hospital. We thought she had made some great improvement so we said we could take her home. We were finally released at 2 p.m.

She slept quite a bit yesterday and last night. She is doing much better. Although she’s not too eager to continue drinking so much fluids.