Saturday, June 7, 2008

When It Rains, It Pours

We deemed this past week "Minor Medical Mishaps" week. It began last weekend as half of our family was a bit under the weather with a cold. We still had a full schedule including my dear Gram being in town and my sister's graduation. For Steven and I the colds turned into pink eye courtesy of our three sweet children who had come down with it the weekend before. We also began to notice that Elijah, who we had repeatedly suspected may have a slight hearing problem, wasn't hearing us much at all. This turned out to be from a minor ear infection, but it gave us the shove we needed to schedule a hearing screening just to be safe. To top off the weekend, Isaiah started pooping blood. Sorry for the gross mental picture you're having right now, but these are the facts. I woke up early Monday morning to get an appoint with our pediatrician as soon as possible, only to find that I had full blow laryngitis and absolutely no voice to make a phone call. I called my husband, whispering my instructions to him. We got an appointment and after some no-fun exams, the doctor told me that he suspected that constipation was the cause. He instructed me to keep an eye on him and that we would need to see a specialist if it didn't stop within a couple days. Thankfully it went away that afternoon.
Two days later as I was visiting with my Gram at my parents a huge thunderstorm with tornado warnings rolled through the area. While I was "stuck" there, I had my first asthma attack in two years. Keeping with the trend of the week, my inhaler was of course sitting 15 miles away at my own house.
We had a couple days break as I finally got my voice back, my lungs began to recover, everybody's toilet habits were normal, and the sniffling noses dried up. Then today was a day we had been looking forward to for a while. Steven's work paid for all of their employees to go to Six Flags America. My sister Christine watched Adriana while Steven and I took the boys for their first amusement park visit. Even though the heat index was 105 degrees, we had a great time and spent a lot of time at the water park section. But our "Minor Medical Mishaps" week wasn't over yet. Towards the end of our day we split up with Steven and Isaiah heading to the wave pool and Elijah and I going over to the tot slides. As Elijah went down the calmest, shortest slide of the day, a little boy walked in front of the landing knocking him against the side of the slide. Elijah had a gash above his eye and was bleeding profusely. After lots of drama and meeting half the staff of Six Flags, my son was bandaged up. I was able to butterfly the impressive cut, and Elijah was very happy not to be headed to hospital.
Steven and I have laughed at the near comedy of the whole week. Steven was also encouraging me with how these sorts of things remind us of how big God and the message of the gospel is and how minor our slight discomforts really are in the grand scheme of things. It's also been a wonderful week for realizing how ungrateful I been about the general health of my family. I see how in the past two years, I've never taken the time to thank God that even though I have asthma I don't experience regular attacks. I see that in my day to day life, I often spend my time wishing my kids were more behaved or life was more orderly than thanking God for three vibrant, healthy children. So all in all, I say this has been just the week I needed.

3 comments:

  1. That is how it always seems to happen in parent land! (one thing right after another) :)

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  2. oh my goodness you poor thing.It seems in the last few weeks everyone has been fighting serious colds. My dad lost his voice and I had the blessing of bronchitis and pnemonia in the past week. Megan has been fighting her cough for atleast a couple of weeks.

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  3. wow, what a week! I am so glad to hear things have calmed down. Thanks for your perspective on how we need to thank God more than we really do. Very uplifting!

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