Thankful for God's grace in growing my dependency on Him this past week in the midst of hives, blood and wheezing...
The rough roller-coaster started on Wednesday when Charlie had a major allergic reaction to nuts and broke out in hives from his neck to knees. Most of the afternoon he spent itching and throwing up. Both were ways of his little body were trying to reject the nuts.
In addition to battling the allergic reaction, Charlie managed to find a piece of glass to cut his finger open. A blood trail across the kitchen floor led me back to the source of the cut... a remnant of a glass jar Charlie had thrown on the floor a few weeks ago.
In the midst of all of this, Charlie was battling some nasty diaper rash along with a molar trying to make its' appearance. Both ingredients that add to the rough week.
Thursday was spent recovering from the nut allergy... it seemed it had taken quite a bit out of him. And by that evening, it looked as if he was picking up a slight cold. Little did we know, those symptoms were the first signs of RSV... a virus that affects your respiratory system.
Friday night is when we realized someone was wrong. After putting him to bed for the night, we could hear him being restless. After a bit, I went into his room to try to settle him down and panicked when I picked him up, he was severely wheezing and taking deep breaths. I yelled for Jimmy. Despite this first time mama panicking, my stable husband remained calm. After making a few phone calls, we decided to spend the night taking shifts holding him in the rocker rather than making a trip to the ER... in hopes the wheezing would subside.
I don't think I've ever prayed as hard and been so scared in my life. The entire night was spent pleading with God to help my baby breath, to stop his wheezing and to give us wisdom as to when we needed to go in.
When morning came, we were hoping his wheezing would lessen since he'd be up and awake. However, it hadn't. Without taking showers, we headed off to get our little baby help. We stopped at our chiropractor first to get him adjusted to help his lungs open up, then headed to the clinic. After close to 4 hours of being in urgent care, we left a diagnosis of RSV, a nebulizer and an exhausted family ready to be out of there. I'm thankful for urgent care clinics in crisis situations but don't necessarily love the unnecessarily procedures (in my opinion) that they want to do. It just makes for a long afternoon with a one year old. However, it definitely made us think and pray for the families who have to spend days and months in hospitals with their children who are battling chronic illnesses.
With the help of the adjustments and the neb, Charlie made great progress by Saturday night. We were so very thankful to see him talking, laughing and smiling again. Such an amazing relief as a mama.
God used this situation to increase my dependency and trust in Him. I felt so helpless as a mom and all I knew to do was to pray and ask God to give us wisdom and to heal my son. He was the only One who could do the healing!
And "ironically", this was the verse on my bathroom counter when we arrived home. Thankful for God's sovereignty in our lives!
