We caught the dreaded disease: H1N1 AKA Swine Flu. It was a blast, let me tell you (note the sarcasm). I don't think I've ever been so sick in my life. Two of my four children were hospitalized and one of them was VERY ill with this sickness. I was literally coughing so much that I had sore muscles in my stomach. And when you've delivered triplets...you find it very difficult to keep your urine in on a normal day... let alone when you're literally coughing out lung tissue! :) Okay, okay...it was nasty. I have to laugh about it. There were so many scary moments.
My oldest triplet was VERY ill. She went for 20 hours without urinating because her kidneys were swollen from the plague. She was throwing up large amounts of blood. Her O2 stats were dropping to pretty low numbers. She would barely move. She didn't sleep for about 30 hours. She would just cry, "Mommy! Help me!" over and over again. So I sat with her in a tiny child's hospital crib bed, and rocked her almost non stop. I took breaks to eat and took breaks to go to the bathroom, but the whole time I was gone, she'd cry for me to help her. It was excruciating. After a day and a half of this agony with her, I finally asked the nurses if she could have some pain medication because she seemed like she was in so much pain. They gave her some drug I had never heard of. The nurse told me it was the infant equivalent of percoset. It helped her stop crying. But she still was so restless.
Those moments were extremely difficult. Not only were the children terribly sick, but I was as well. I have no idea how we made it through. I thank God with all my heart that my mom was here to help with the other two kids at home.
My other child in the hospital did great once she got on the IV and got some fluids in her. They were both on anti nausea medicines to help them stop throwing up. They both had a bunch of tests done to check their bodies.
I was sitting there in that hospital room with my two youngest daughters, and it brought back to my mind our days in the NICU. It was strange to recall sitting beside their beds and begging them to get stronger. It is awful to sit in a hospital room and have doctors look at your child and say things like, "She is really bad. She is really really sick." And to have nurses come in your room and look at your child with a worried expression and say, "She is VERY sick." Those are the sayings that make mom's worry. When the doctor's and nurses are worried....it's difficult to have faith in the system. But ultimately, my children's lives are in my Savior's hands.
My older daughter was literally seconds away from being elevated to a different room and having a catheter installed. The nurse came in to take her away. She disconnected her from the machines and I went to give her one last hug. I was crying and praying and saying, "Please God make her pee!" I kid you not, in that moment, she peed. It was the very last minute, but she did. She didn't pee very much but they say that usually that's how it goes. They'll pee a tiny amount, and then gradually it will increase to more and more. I was sitting there and screaming "woohoo! Thank you God!!" Her nurse and I were both cheering and laughing. It was so wonderful! In the few moments after she finally peed, she completely turned around. She started smiling again. She was weak and she was still very restless, but she stopped crying constantly, and moaning, and she started to look much much better.
This illness is nasty. I mean, it's really ugly. I will tell you also, that I am a clean freak. My son is Immune Suppressed and I am VERY particular about hand washing and healthy eating. We still caught it. I clean carts before we get in them, wash hands constantly, and work very hard to keep everyone healthy. And we STILL caught it. Here it is, two weeks later, and we are still coughing (though it's much better. Doc says it will take a minimum of a month for that to go away), and slowly getting our energy back to normal. It's strange that a virus which is so tiny that we can't even see it, can cause such destruction. And the scary component of this illness, is that you can not predict the people that it will destroy. My immune suppressed child had barely ANY symptoms of Swine Flu. He only had a fever. That's it. Myself, and my four very healthy children, were EXTREMELY sick. My two children who are almost never sick, had it the worst of all. We're talking fevers in the 104s, that were not coming down on Motrin and Tylenol. We're talking toddlers who are so sick they won't move. They won't play. They won't eat, and they don't even want to drink. We're talking toddlers who moan because they're too weak to cry. We're talking a cough that is so vicious that you can turn blue from having a coughing spell that lasts for forty five seconds, where you can't get a breath in. Where it is excruciatingly painful to inhale...feels like there is glass in your lungs. We did not have sore throats, and we did not all have the same symptoms either. The ones of us who got it first seemed to be the sickest. The ones who got it the last had the most minor symptoms. It is the most bizarre illness we have ever had go through here.
So I don't know what else to write about it. We went through the valley of Swine Flu horribleness, and we survived it. It didn't kill us, and now we're immune! :) I'm just glad it's finally over.
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