Lissette's Pneumonia

For those of you who haven't heard the news & for those of you who've been praying for us:

On February 21st, Lissette woke us up in the morning by coming into our room. She had a fever & a croupy cough. Her fever was high all that day & so I called our Dr's office to see if we could have her checked out. I believe in letting fevers run their course, mostly, but as her fever crept higher we gave her Ibuprophen to bring it back to a reasonable 102 degrees. Our Dr's office informed me that they had no openings until the Tuesday after & that if we felt she was bad off to bring her to the ER. We put off going to the ER until Sabbath afternoon, when her fever got up to 104.7. They checked her over a bit for bacterial infection & sent us home telling us that it was viral & to bring her in again if we couldn't manage her fever with Ibuprophen & Acetaminophen.

Her fever yo-yoed until we got her in to the Dr. on Tuesday. She was really listless & managed only to hang out on the couch, watching TV. The Dr. sent us directly over to Skyline Hospital emergency room. All that day, Lissette had been refusing to drink & had become dehydrated. They started her on an IV & then got a chest xray. The Dr. said that she had pneumonia in her right lung. Her Dr. considered it serious enough to try to get her into the ICU in Emanuel Children's Hospital in Portland. They sent out an ambulance from Portland to transport us. When the ambulance arrived Lissette was already responding well to the IV fluids that she had received & the oxygen they had put her on. Her oxygen saturation levels were now good enough that they decided on the spot not to admit her to the ICU. We were going to the regular children's ward of the hospital - the first good news I'd heard all day!!

We had an exciting trip in the ambulance & I'm sure that the bill will be exciting too. When we were about to cross the bridge, a woman almost crashed into the ambulance despite his lights, sirens & horn! She had the nerve to sit there yelling at the ambulance driver & flippin' him off. I was so mad!! After that, our trip to the hospital was not eventful, thankfully.

We only had to spend a little over 24 hrs. at the hospital & Lissette was feeling much better. I want to thank all of you for your prayers! I'm very grateful to everyone for their cards, & for the meals that were brought over by our church family.

We found out that Lissette caught RSV, which quickly developed into pneumonia. The RSV is very contagious & we are staying home as much as possible. Christopher came down with RSV & pneumonia also, but his pneumonia is much less severe because he is still nursing. He is on antibiotics & will hopefully get over the pneumonia soon. Michael & I caught the bug too, but we didn't get pneumonia like the kids did, thankfully! I'm probably the most healthy out of all of us, good thing too because somebody has got to take care of all the sickos. We're getting sick & tired of being sick & tired, but hopefully we will rejoining society again soon! Thanks again for your prayers!