Josie's Hospital Stay

 It has been a bit crazy around here, with Nile studying/taking finals this week and having a lot of things due last week, and with Josie getting so ill. Just to document, for my own sake, how things went down with Jos...she started not feeling well Saturday morning. By noon, she was throwing up and feeling awful. She threw up and had bad stomach cramps most of the day and most of the night. I slept in her bed (I layed in her bed, I should say:) Not much sleep took place at all) with her, because she was vomiting so much. She couldn't even keep down sips of water. Sunday was slightly better as far as the throwing up, but she then started feeling feverish and got up to 103.5 by early afternoon. My main concern, however, was the fact that she was very lethargic and could not stay awake. I mean even for 5 minutes at a time. I would read her a book, and she could barely stay awake for it. She literally slept almost all day. I started getting really worried because as the day progressed, she was not even talking or answering my questions. She would nod or not answer at all. I called a nurse hotline, and they recommended calling my on-call doctor (I was trying to avoid that because it was 11pm on a Sunday night) and they said to bring her to the ER. So, at midnight Jos and I went to the ER. They did an x-ray just to make sure it wasn't appendicitis, which it wasn't. They did blood work, which told them she was pretty dehydrated. Then the fun began...putting in the IV. They unfortunately missed, so there was a lot of blood everywhere. But Jos was too sick to do anything other than whimper pitifully. I sat in THE most uncomfortable plastic chair in the ER from midnight until nine the next morning...did not sleep for one minute, it was horrible. She was not perking up as fast as they'd hoped, in fact, she was not perking up at all, even after nine hours of IV fluids, so they wanted to keep us there. Thankfully, they moved us to an awesome room in the meantime...I was SO thankful for that. Josie was still barely talking and was having diarrhea, but no more vomiting. The boys and Nile came to visit her before they went to school, but I don't even know if she noticed. They were very sweet to her, worried, I could tell. Jos started on her second IV bag, and still no real improvement. They decided they wanted to keep us the rest of the day and night due to this. The doctor came in and said they were still concerned that she wasn't perking up at this point, though some children just take longer than others to recover. At least we had a great hospital room in the Children's Hospital section. A recliner, a couch, a fridge, our own bathroom, etc. Finally, at 8 o'clock that night, Gabe was able to get the first little smile we had seen in three days. Yay! I slept in the hospital bed with Josie, and got the most sleep I'd had in two nights (a whopping 4 hours, because she was wide awake from 3am to 5am, and we got woken up a few times for vitals checks:) I was just happy that she was actually talking to me and responding!). They removed the IV fluids (she went through very close to three full bags) and wanted to keep us a few more hours to make sure she would continue to do okay, and she did. We were able to go home late that afternoon. Incidentally, Josie lost 6 pounds:( She was down to 38 lbs.at her follow up visit. Seth really loved the hospital room, and pretty much only said hi to Jos upon arriving and asked if she was contagious...lol. He enjoyed the free drinks and snacks that were offered. I seriously had to kick him out of the room to go home to bed, he wanted to stay the night with Josie and me. Classic Seth. Gabe was just precious with her, laying in bed with her for a long time, trying to get her to laugh/respond. I just love that boy.He paid for that dearly by coming down with the stomach flu a few days later:(   He bounced back super fast, though...and go figure, Seth never did get sick. We were SO blessed by all the emails, texts, meals, offers of meals, prayers, etc. of our friends and families. Thank you all so much. That's the crazy story. Josie and I both needed a few days to recover from that! The pictures uploaded somewhat out of order, and I don't know how to fix it, so sorry!

Our first day back at home, I came in Josie's room to see why it was so quiet, and found her like this.

See what I mean?! He's having a little too much fun:)