So . . . the follow-up on Saturday became a hospital stay. Poor Sadie has had so many tests run on her. The doctors did find that she had very severe infections in both kidneys. For awhile they were searching for any additional mystery infections, but decided that it was probably only the kidneys. She is on IV antibiotics, and will be for a few weeks (she now has a PICC line, and I get to administer the IV antibiotics at home). They found the start of an abscess on one of her kidneys, and were hoping the antibiotic would take care of it. Today we found out that her overall progress -- fever-wise, bloodwork-wise, and abscess-wise -- is happening, but very slowly. So I'm home tonight (Ryan and I have been trading off sleeping at the hospital with Sadie, at her request), and will be back up at the hospital bright and early to hear if they decided whether to do a biopsy or leave the abscess alone and continue to monitor. Originally we thought she might come home today, but now it might be tomorrow, depending on whether she has the biopsy or not. Either way, she is still not out of the woods. I will be spending most of my time over the next few weeks administering drugs and hauling Sadie to follow-up appointments at downtown doctor offices. Also -- ya know Ava had also been having the mystery fever, but it had finally cleared? Now her pee smells a bit weird, and we have to find time to take her in for a check tomorrow. If she is harboring a huge infection, I will definitely go la-la.
The good news is that the hospital is really spectacular, and we have super doctors working on Sadie's case. We have wonderful family and friends that run the show while we're gone. Just as something is falling apart or spirits are low, the exact right thing happens or person appears to help us out. Our Lord's tender mercies are abundant. I will write more about this later, when (if?) things slow down and when (if?) I get some more sleep.
I decided to take a few pictures of Sadie today, since I'm sure that someday we might want to document this event. You'll be able to see that she looks a little better (her tubes are hiding under a sleeve, which seems to calm her down, and if you're familiar enough with her, you'll be able to tell that she's lost weight, but her color is returning a bit and the purply eyes are starting to disappear). She seems to go through various ups and downs during the day, although slowly there are more ups than downs. I imagine it will also be better when we are finally back in our own house, too.
Here she is outside at one of their "healing gardens" -- looks like Candy Land, huh?
Posing with the pictures she painted in the playroom yesterday:
The playroom also has a role play section, with all of the equipment she has seen up close and personal over the last week. I've tried to convince her how fun it would be to give the dolly a CT scan or an IV, but she won't have ANYTHING to do with it. She does happily point out when other kids come in with IVs or other things coming out of them, as she realizes that other kids have had the same things happen to them as she has.
Fun with some glitter glue!
She LOVES to paint in the playroom. I'm thinking I'm going to have to set up something like this for homeschool, she'd be in heaven.
Sadie takes a turn with the camera, documenting my contribution to the painting...
Finally, you know you're in a children's hospital when you can order up Spaghetti O's for dinner!
So, in summary, we're all totally pooped and ready to come home, but feel grateful for some of the more beautiful parts of this experience. A few times I've had to excuse myself to go have a good cry, but then you just buck up and move on. Someone always has it worse. Like the baby next door tonight that was crashing enough that there were suddenly 20 doctors and nurses in their room and a dad crying in the hallway. So I keep my chin up and give everyone we see a warm "hi," just in case they're having a worse day than I am. Thank you for your prayers and nice emails and phone messages, we sure appreciate you all.