I know it's been a long time since I have blogged, however I have gone over this topic in my head for the past two months now not really knowing if I wanted to put it all down into words.
About two months ago after a completely normal day, where Micah was energetic and ate a normal amount, I sent my husband to wake Micah up from his nap because he had been sleeping for too long. The next thing I knew Urian was hurrying up the stairs saying that Micah had a fever. When it comes to Micah and his health problems we usually do a lot of listening to our gut on what we should do. When it's time to head straight to the hospital you just know. And that is what we did.
When we got to the hospital his fever was 105 and he was very lethargic. We didn't even have to wait in the waiting room, they got us straight back. We walked into the room and there were already around 3 nurses and a doctor already in there waiting for him. They put him on septic protocol, and he was soon admitted to inpatient and put on a couple of antibiotics.
In the days that followed there were a lot of tests, all resulting in nothing. Labs hardly ever reveal what the exact bacteria is. However, this is the first time they started saying they were concerned about what his lab results were saying about his blood. I was sitting in his room comforting him a couple of days into his hospitalization when a pediatric doctor came in to talk to me. He said that they weren't sure what was going on, but that they wanted to test for several things - one of those things being cancer in his blood. I have rarely seen a doctor so kind, as he sat on the ground next to Micah and started talking to Micah about Elmo and singing songs to him to make him more comfortable as he examined him. Even as I was shocked at what he had just talked to me about, I did really appreciate the way he treated Micah as a human being and not as another diagnosis.
We waited days for the results, and although his blood did show many worrying things (such as an extremely low white count, Poikilocytosis, Burr Cells and Atypical Lymph) they did come to the conclusion that it wasn't cancer, and rather a possibility of a different blood disorder that was being affected by his infection.
During his hospitalization, as Micah lay lethargic in a hospital wagon that I would pull around to soothe him, I thought a lot. This was the first time I really thought about the possibility of Micah getting so sick that one day he might not recover from an infection. I had talked with parents online, and I had heard the stories of children with Hirschsprung's Disease getting an infection that goes septic. I had heard about the deaths, and the warnings the parent's of those angel children give to the other parents on the forums. However, we've always been very lucky. Micah had never been septic before this time, and he had always responded to the medications. So even though I knew logically that sometimes these kids don't make it I had never really connected that possibility emotionally to our own situation. And let me tell you, there is no way to put into words how that feels. I was honestly floored by the realization.
It was hard watching Micah be so sick. He is a toddler who is so completely full of life, who never slows down for anything. Yet he laid in the wagon not even turning his head when we passed things or when spoken to. He slept through painful medical procedures.
Over the days he slowly regained his personality, and although it took him a while he began sitting up in the wagon and interacting. Slowly he started wanting to walk instead of sitting, and then he wanted to play. And then we got to go home, and start returning to a normal life.
I am thankful to the hospital staff we had. The nurses who stroked his forehead and covered him in icepacks to bring down his fever. I'm thankful to the nurses who sought out sesame street books to give him when he was too weak to play, but enjoyed looking at books. When they would order him food even though we knew he probably wouldn't eat it. To the doctors who treated him like any other toddler even when he wasn't reactive enough to care. To all of the staff who treated him like a child in need of kindness. The nurse who took him to a balcony to watch the fireworks even though he wouldn't have known he had missed anything. I'm thankful that when he was hurting so badly, they cared and how they made it their mission to make him comfortable. I'm thankful that some of them visited even when they weren't assigned to him.
I'm amazed at so much kindness I witnessed. I'm amazed that even though we didn't want to be there, I'm thankful that I got to share my son with them because I know that he received an incredible amount of love from them.
