CRAZINESS...

Where do I even begin...  Well, for those of you not on Facebook, let me catch you up...

This was my post from Wednesday night- "Not the most ideal way to spend a Mommy and Son date night, but it's the way we roll... an ambulance as our mode of transportation (from the hospital in Sugar Land to the Medical Center) and a hospital room as our accommodations. Please pray for Andrew, he has pneumonia :-(. Please also pray for the rest of us... Thank you prayer warriors!"

This is my post from Friday night- "Brace yourself for the latest installment of the Ross' Divinely designed roller coaster... We have two out of three kids (Andrew and Grace) currently hospitalized at two different hospitals (across the street from each other) with pneumonia! I can't even wrap my mind around the situation right now, but I do know that we could really use your prayers! The good news is that I know God's got this (good thing because I sure don't :-)!"

Yesterday (Saturday), Abigail spent the day with Andrew and I in Andrew's hospital room.  We walked over to Grace's hospital to see David and Grace for a short visit while my parents kept Andrew company...

...and then by God's grace, Andrew was discharged at about 7:00 pm last night.  I couldn't wait to get home and get some real sleep...  (more on that in a minute).  

The two days prior were really scary days for me, despite Andrew being on two standard antibiotics for Community Acquired Pneumonia, he continued to spike very high fevers (on Wednesday night it got up to 105.4 :-/), so I began talking to the dr.'s about expanding his antibiotic coverage and going with an agent that was in my opinion preferable, but more expensive.  Typically there are two other antibiotics that they like to try first (in large part because they are less expensive), before going to the one I was suggesting, but after much discussion they agreed to go with my preference for which I was super grateful.  After one dose of the new antibiotic we could see great improvement in his vitals (praise the Lord)!  So, the reason Andrew's condition brought me to my knees is because it was new territory having one of our "healthy" kids so sick.  We learned the lesson early on that Grace is God's little girl first, we have just been given the honor to be her earthly parents for a time.  After all, He loves her more than we ever could, knows her best and He is the author of her "story."  I know that this truth applies to all of our children, but for some reason it was easier to adjust to that truth with Grace because we knew that her life would be/ is, full of so much uncertainty.  Therefore, fearing for Andrew's health rocked me...  I couldn't stop thinking about a lesson that David taught at church a few years ago (on Psalm 127) where he used a song by Jewel as an illustration.  The song is about a sweet brother and sister relationship where the brother gets injured and is in a vegetative state and the sister is asking him to please come and play, etc.  David and I both had to fight the temptation to think about how devastated (that word doesn't even begin to describe the feeling, but I can't think of another one at the moment) Abigail would be if we lost Andrew (and OF COURSE, we would too).  Just being separated for a few days while Andrew was in the hospital crushed Abigail.  All she wanted to do is sit in Andrew's hospital room ALL DAY just so she could be near him, when she had to leave without him she would just weep.  

All that being said, God sent an angel in the form of a nurse to take EXCEPTIONAL care of my boy (and me :-) and encourage me with truths about the awesome God that we serve.  She helped me refocus my eyes on God, not my fears and she went on to bless us in big and small ways.  Here is just one example, she had a gift card to the hospital gift shop that she received for her birthday, as she left at the end of her shift, she gave the gift card to another nurse and asked that she go get Andrew what ever he wanted (that the gift card could cover :-) from the gift shop...  Who does that?!?!  Our angel of a nurse does!  She wasn't assigned to us the second night (I seriously thought I was going to bust out with a temper tantrum when I heard that because I had been counting down the minutes until I got to see her again), but she still came to Andrew's room before her shift to hang out, she checked on Andrews status throughout the night (even though she was on a different floor) and she came back at the end of her shift to pray with us.

So, once Andrew was discharged I went to go fill his prescription and found out that any pharmacy that would have this specialty medication was closed and the 24 hours pharmacies that were open didn't have it stocked.  I was getting super nervous because Andrew needed his next dose at midnight and it looked like there was little hope of getting it filled on a weekend.  I called the hospital to see if they could help us out and it was a huge song and dance because he had already been "discharged," so long story short, after driving around the medical center for 4 hours, trying to burn time while the social worker at the hospital tried to help us find a solution, the mission was accomplished!  That social worker was another heavenly blessing, despite my mental, emotional and physical exhaustion from the 4 hour tour.  We arrived home at midnight with the medication in hand (just enough to get us through Monday afternoon).  Will you PLEASE pray that our local pharmacy receives the medication that we need tomorrow (they put in the order for it today, but can't guarantee that the warehouse will have it in stock)?  

Grace is still in the hospital, they tried to ween her off of oxygen this morning, but her sats (oxygen) dipped too low while she was sleeping, so they are keeping her overnight and going to retry the oxygen wean again tomorrow.  Will you PLEASE pray that she is able to get off and stay off of oxygen and that the antibiotics that she's on do the trick (as quickly as possible)?  

I forgot to mention that the day before Andrew went into the hospital, David had surgery on his nose to repair a deviated septum.   Never a dull moment :-/

This has been a whole new level of crazy for our family, so we REALLY appreciate (and need) your prayers and phone calls, texts and messages!  Thank you, sweet Village!

One last thing...  I'm exhausted, so there won't be any proof reading on this blog post, please excuse all grammatical errors ;-).