a very good report for my blue eyed baby boy!!!

[i knew he must’ve been feeling a little better when he actually let me take a shower before our third trip to the eye specialists!]

[celebrating a good report at the children’s hospital!! that baby boy earned himself a new airplane and a gluten free cookie courtesy of gaga. ;)]

[when he felt good enough to specifically request a red shirt… and then seeing this little sight! oh, i was ecstatic. :)]

[the most beautiful blue eyes in the whole wide world! two of them!!]

—

last week, i was driving around with the most miserable boy i’ve ever seen in the back seat… from doctor to doctor… 3 days in a row. his infected eye was swollen nearly shut for longer than i was comfortable with, his fever seemingly going nowhere, and i was just praying minute by minute that with each medical professional that saw him and each dose of antibiotics, we’d be on the right track.

oh, his poor eye! yikes, it looked so bad… they deemed it preseptal or periorbital cellulitis, which is exactly what i had been afraid of. i knew it was treatable, yes, but i also knew it could quickly become dangerous… where we were on that scale, we would just have to see. and hooow i wished it could’ve just been a “regular” ole eye infection! pink eye seems much less frightening, doesn’t it?! as we went along, everyone that looked at him was hopeful, but also very clear that while he seemed to be on the right track, he could easily take a nose dive into orbital cellulitis, in which case he’d need to be admitted to the hospital ASAP. [and if he’d been a year or under, he’d have definitely been hospitalized right away.]

this completely haunted me. he was already so scared and traumatized, i absolutely could not imagine how he’d feel if he had to be strapped down, needles stuck in him, shoved through a CT scanner, or worse – put through surgery. i mean, i know people go through this and watch their babies have to go through these sorts of things… and you think “hooray for medicine and technology that can save lives!” but when it’s your own baby you picture going through it, the emotional aspect alone is enough to make you sick.

anyway, each time we headed to the hospital, i knew there was a chance we wouldn’t be coming home. i was so tired and he was so miserable, i hardly recognized him. i felt skeptical about what they could tell from his terrible-looking eye, anyway, since you can’t actually see behind the eye without being super invasive, and he wasn’t making the simple exams easy, either. “…of course, abscesses can sometimes develop…” i heard the resident that had just seen him say to someone behind a closed door, and i thought, “oh, no no! let’s not say words like that, please and thank you!” but i also knew that so so so many people were praying for him and for us and all that mattered was that God already had us on the right rack.

and THANK GOODNESS! hallelujah! i am sitting here today with a boy who is proudly displaying two of the most beautiful blue eyes on this whole planet. he was able to leap up and run to the window when he heard a big truck drive down the road. we were able to take sissy to school again! [but thaaank goodness for BFF emergency carpool situations!] he’s back to doing more playing than crying. oh, it feels so good to have my gocco back.

you know, last week, i kept thinking, “gosh, i just want to go back to our normal life!” and then it would hit me how many families don’t get to just have their normal life or normal child back. so many little ones are living at the childrens hospital for weeks on end, enduring treatments and surgeries and that just breaks my heart so much. my sister was one of those babies with a cancer diagnosis before she was even a year old, and i just really honestly don’t know how my parents did it. [and ugh, sorry, mom, for the childrens hospital PTSD experience!]

anyway… my brain needs so much coffee on this monday… but this is the gist of our rocco boy’s current status!! honestly, he’s not 100% yet… but he still has 4 more days of antibiotics… and obviously, you know me, i have him on aaaall the natural things i can get my hands on, too. [my mother-in-law works in natural health, thank goodness!!] so, we’re on the mend, as far as i can tell!! yay. yay. yay.

and THANK YOU x’s a million to everyone for all the wonderful prayers and messages. i sure have learned how much i depend on them!! i mean, i can’t even say how much it has helped me just to know that my baby boy was being lifted up by so many caring souls. if you ever need an extra prayer, yourself, feel free to email me and i will surely do it. 🙂 there’s nothing better than knowing you have a bit of community supporting you, near or far!

whew!! here’s to new weeks and new mercies…

xoxoxoxo