Sunday morning Abigail woke with a cough like a barking seal. We figured she may have Croup. The rest of the day she seemed to be fine and the cough even disappeared. Late in the afternoon, she started to slow down and just wanted to be held. I held her on the couch and she started getting sleepy at 4:00, which is not a good sign. Soon after, she began to feel hot. Hotter than normal and hot enough to take to the hospital. Anytime either twin gets a fever of 100.3 or higher we have to take them to the local ER. So, when we took her temp. it was 102.5. Our friend Morgan and his three girls watched our kids and waited for a more permanent sitter to come over as Kim and I made our way to the hospital.
As they accessed her port (stick a big needle through her skin) this time with her screaming and saying "no more!", I thought to myself, "don't they have enough strikes against them? Do they really need this extra suffering on top of everything else?" It is hard to watch them go through this month after month and realize they still have a long road to slog down. I know we need to be positive about things but, sometimes it is just too much for too long. Yet as much as I wish and pray for it to be different, we are helpless to take this away from them. We must go through it with them. I have wondered about the purpose of suffering in our lives. It is awful to go through or watch. In the past my first reaction when seeing someone suffer was to look away, try to ignore it, or somehow try not to think about. Now when I hear about someone's tough situation or see them go through something difficult, my heart goes out to them and I want to run and help but, many times I find myself unable to help because of my current limitations/situation. And so, I feel helpless but, in a way, I know what they are going through. There are many out there that may appear to have it easy or that things are not too hard for them. I don't believe that it is easy for anyone. Through the things which I have suffered, I have tried to become more accepting and patient of people's "bad days" because I don't how deep some of their struggles really are and I don't want to be the person that adds more weight to their heavy burden.
Sorry, for the side bar....back to Abigail - I stayed with her last night and Kim is taking the shift tonight. Abigail's culture came back that she has RSV, which scares me. The last time the twinnies had it, their lungs partially collapsed and they required heavy intervention at the hospital. They have permanent scaring from that run in with it. We pray that she will get better soon and be able to come home.
We feel blessed that our family has the health that it does. We were brought back to reality yesterday by the story of a family that has had a sad turn of events. The family had been getting chemo for their 10 or 11 year old son and then just recently had to start treatment up again when the cancer came roaring back. The 11 year old was going through a rough patch when the mom, from dealing with the stress of everything her son was going through had a heart attack and died. The father decided to keep it from his son (he had two other kids - one had died when she was younger and the other child is fine.) until the son was through this tough part in his treatment. The doctors ran some tests over the next couple of days and realized that the son's cancer was terminal and that he didn't have much time to live. The father, after just losing his wife a few days earlier, sat down with the son and told him that mom would be waiting for him on the other side and that he didn't have much time to go.....I don't personally know the family but, my heart goes out to them. What a difficult situation to go through. I hope my girls make it, though I don't if they will. I pray for peace to be with that family - they need it! There is much to be grateful for!
