I decided in these days of waiting that I should write down some of what God is teaching me as we have moved from what seemed like a strange virus to being on the 10th floor of St Louis Children's Hospital with our son Cameron fighting a septic infection. The Lord is near...that's one thing I'm sure of.
Although my days and nights run together now in one big blur, it started last Monday when Cameron's heart rate seemed to soar at home and he had a strong headache and confusion. We took him to our local ER and they did a little test for the normal strep and flu and said it was a virus. As the next days progressed he continued to have fevers and violent shaking and his heart concerned me (he has a VSD..a small hole in his heart). We went to our local family doctor and he said it was a virus. About Wednesday Cameron complained that his foot hurt and his fevers and violent shaking continued..he spent much time in the bathtub just looking at his Star Wars bath toys we bought last year in Disney. Slowly he became more and more lethargic and the fevers continued and I kept feeling his chest and thinking that it seemed that his heart was struggling more. On Friday I just cried..my mommy heart knew something was very wrong and I kept fearing we'd make a mistake and something would go wrong. The doctor said we could try an antibiotic. On Saturday his fever was down but by then he had to be carried everywhere...Saturday night we went to our local ER again and explained our situation. They ran blood cultures which would take days then checked his chest but did nothing for his leg. They came to the conclusion that his chest xray showed pneumonia but I thought that was inconsistent with the other things going on since he hadn't coughed at all.
We were feeling a bit of despair as they told us to keep him at the hospital overnight and they would try to do IV fluids since he was dehydrated as well. They kept on sticking him over and over and were unsuccessful.
Then God sent someone to help....a staff member at the hospital...she quietly came in and asked about his symptoms..I explained the high fever, the overall joint pain and that he could not use his leg. She told us that these were dangerous symptoms and we should get to a children's hospital asap. We thanked her quietly and then agreed to stay overnight since Rick would preach in the morning. I had prayed for God to confirm what we should do and give me courage to challenge things a bit. Many people encouraged us to seek help for him and we are thankful for each one and the confirmation it was to us that we were doing the right thing.
That night I went home to bed while Rick stayed at the hospital..thinking through the fact that we'd have to get him to Children's Hospital after Rick finished preaching...and I made myself recite every verse I knew as I tried to pray and go to sleep without answers. This made me thankful for Scripture and it's ability to comfort and remind us of truth and reminded me that I need to memorize some more passages asap!
Lamentations 3:57 You came near when I called on you, you said "Do not fear"
