It's been busy

This week turned out to be completely different than I planned.  Little Rebecca came down with a respiratory virus on the weekend.  Monday Linda brought her in to be checked by the doctor.  Doctor sent Linda and Rebecca to the Children's Hospital emergency for a chest X-ray.

Within minutes of her arriving at the emerg, 4 doctors were working on Rebecca and Linda was mildly freaked out!  Rebecca was struggling to breathe and that's not good in a 6-week old baby.  She was admitted and put in isolation because she has RSV (Respiratory something-something Virus).  She had heart monitors, fluids by IV, oxygen tubes and nebulizers every 2 hours.  One unhappy little girl!!

She stabilized by yesterday and was transferred to a different hospital's acute pediatric care unit.  That mean an ambulance ride!  Today she is only on oxygen.  A sign of improvement.  However, her breathing is still laboured, her cough is still "murky" and her oxygen levels are low when they take her off the oxygen.  She is improving all the time, but cannot go home until her oxygen levels remain good for 6-12 hours on her own.

Linda, obviously, has moved into the hospital with Rebecca.  So Harry and I and Pat and Brian have been helping John out with the other 3 kids.   John has been taking mornings off to be with the boys, then bringing them here for the afternoon and supper.  After work, John goes to the hospital to have dinner with Linda and spend some time with Rebecca.  Then he comes here and gets the boys to go home for the night.  Tomorrow Pat doesn't have any classes to teach so she's going to go out to Langdon so the boys can be at home for the whole day.

The doctors and nurses are all surprised that Rebecca is the fourth child, but this is the first hospital experience for John and Linda!  Hopefully the last for a very long while!

EMT's getting Rebecca ready for transfer

Big stretcher, little girl

Opa's turn to relieve Mom so she can go for some lunch.

Perspective

The last few weeks have been dotted with reminders that pretty much everything that happens to you and around you is good or bad depending on your perspective.

I went into hospital last week for cardiac ablation.  Admittedly, I was a bit consumed with anxiousness about the procedure and what they would find.  PTL!  While my cardiac surgeon was not able to ablate anything, she had a good long look at my heart and how it is functioning.  She told us that my heart is strong, functions well, no indication of blockages and is merely plagued by arrhythmia ... and the 2 kinds of arrhythmia I experience are not life-threatening, only life annoying.  My "condition" seems to be in a dormant state right now so I was prescribed NO MORE MEDICATION (serious dance of joy here!) and we'll follow up in another 3 and 6 months to see how I'm doing.

Two days later we got the news that a good friend was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy this week.   And another friend who was diagnosed with liver, colon and uterine cancer 3 days before Christmas began aggressive chemo this week.  And a third friend's husband had a massive heart attack the same day I had my ablation resulting in damage not only to his heart, but also to his kidneys.

My little procedure really was that ... little.    Perspective.

I have a "happy" heart in more ways than one!