Return to Dupont

I was having so much fun cleaning my house, doing laundry, watching Kobe play pat a cake with his doll, and brooming around on his trike and Kierra snoozing peacefully in front of the air conditioner last Friday. 

My phone rang, and I answered quickly, not expecting my while day to do a 180 turn. It was Dr. Z. from Dupont, wanting me to get labs done on Kierra asap. The only place that I knew to go for immediate results was to the ER. She had been very pale the last few days, but doing well otherwise. 

My mind was buzzing when I got off the phone. I don’t like that uncomfortable over drive you need to shift into when you suddenly have to make major arrangements fast. As in, find a baby sitter for Kobe, pack a hospital bag just in case, wrap up the house…and poor Kierra had sweated her hair  into a sopping mass of tangle before I realized that the fan in her room wasn’t keeping her sufficiently cool a few hours ago. 

I called our neighbor lady who generously offered to watch Kobe till Steve got off work. Then I flew around the house, packed our bags, cleaned up Kierra, grabbed her meds,and formula and suction and oxygen and was out the door. I even took time to grab the quickest food I could find since I knew how long ER visits could drag into. Pretzels, cheese, and an icecream sandwich:) 

We got to the ER at 12 noon and 8 hours later, they were loading Kierra into the ambulance to transport her to Dupont in Deleware. Her labs weren’t just awful, but they needed to be monitored closer since she is on Lovenox and blood pressure meds.

Steve and Kobe came into Lancaster General in time to tell her Bye, and bring me a sandwich and hugs. I drove down in our van and waited for what seemed like forever until they told me she was safely in her room upstairs. 

They redid labs at Dupont and found Her potassium levels were very high. This is very dangerous since it can cause heart attacks. They gave her a yucky brown medication to help flush it out of her body. I was glad she had a Gtube and didn’t need to drink it!

Thankfully she didn’t need a blood transfusion this time. Originally we thought she likely would, but she seemed to be holding her own, so we are greatful.

The weekend made everything run slower around here, including Kierra. She slept almost all day Sunday, so Steve, Kobe, and I ate at the Ronald McDonald house and I went to restock some of Kobe’s essentials for the week. We had a good day, considering our major change of plans from a nice family weekend at home, to a family weekend in the hospital! 🙂

Sunday night, Steve went back home with Kobe and I planned to be discharged on Monday with Kierra. Plans were rolling right along until the kidney Dr. came round and suggested we add a powder to her formula that will leach the potassium out of it. They also put her on weekly injections of Epoetin to help her kidneys produce more red blood cells which should help her constant anemia.

So that moved our discharge date to Wednesday. I wasn’t thrilled about staying longer, but I’d rather get it all figured out and ironed as smooth as possible before we head home and have to return again in a week! 

Kierra is being very patient about it all and taking lots of beauty sleeps. We’re hoping she does OK on this formula change! Otherwise, we need to start with a different formula which would take another day to adjust to.

Every time I’m in here, I meet more amazing people and hear more amazing stories.

Like the baby that was born after many years of her parents waiting and praying. She was perfectly beautiful but needed open heart surgery immediately after birth. At two months, they discovered she was deaf and blind and would need two more heart surgerys and two new kidneys. The parents said -that’s enough! They didn’t want to put her through all the suffering, so they let her go. And she was carried away to heaven after 5 short months.

The mom’s testimony was ” i was so privileged to be her mommy.”

Isn’t that just amazing! No “why did God give us this baby to take it away?” (although I’m guessing she did struggle with that sometime or another if she was human 🙂 

I think she felt like God had a plan bigger then life for their child. So she opened her hand . And let go.

Now I’m goina be crying all over the place here soon if I don’t wrap this up ! 🙂

Peace to all of you tonight….and the calm assurance that letting go is OK. God’s gottcha.