Hope in the Hospital

On Sunday we woke up at about noon. Becky had been aware that Hope had been sick during the night and thankfully Misty and Carmen had been there to take care of her. When we had been up for a while we realized that she was not improving. We had an appointment with her pediatrician, Dr. Timothy who is a member of our church, for Tuesday but knew that she needed medical attention right away. We called Dr. Tim at home to tell him that we were going to take Hope to the Emergency Room and he called back to tell us to take her directly to a room that he would have prepared for her. We were grateful to not have to go through the Emergency Room routine.

When we arrived at the hospital Dr. Tim was there right away and had to prepare Hope for an IV. She was dehydrated again, a little worse than in San Francisco. The Doctor listened to her lungs and ordered a chest X-ray. He also looked at the X-ray she had done in San Francisco for comparison. The X-rays confirmed his diagnosis that she had pneumonia in one lung. He had to put the IV in her foot and Becky held her and tried to comfort her. It was very difficult, Hope was hard to hold, and it is a helpless feeling when you don't know if your words of comfort to your child are understood. Dr. Tim was very gentle and did as good a job as was possible, but Becky worried that the trust we had been trying to build had suffered a major setback. Afterward Hope would turn her head from us when we spoke to her for about an hour.

Hope was very lethargic, a far cry from the happy smiling, singing little girl of a week ago.

It was difficult to see her like this. No matter what hopeful dreams we had there was almost a regretful feeling that we had brought a lot of stress and confusion into this little girl's life. At times fear would come, what if this was something that she couldn't recover from? We prayed with our doctor, and with each other. Later, Pastor Steven and wife Angie came in and prayed with us, and the next day Pastor Jonothan our senior pastor.

Doctor Tim assured us that several hours of the fluids would perk Hope up. Becky and I slept in the room with Hope, Becky on the bed with her and me in a sleeper chair. At three in the morning we were still wide awake, I guess we were on China time. We finally slept about two or three hours, and the doctor came in fairly early to check on Hope. Sure enough Hope did look better, but was still listless all day. On Monday night I went home at about sundown and fed the cows. Becky slept on the hospital bed with Hope in the crib for part of the night and with her the rest. On Tuesday Hope was looking better and the doctor said that if she ate and drank and could hold down her food she could go home.