He Chose to Give | The Hospital Story

Charlie is asleep right now. 
My sweet, handsome, precious boy is breathing deeply as he rests peacefully snuggled with his favorite blanket. 
And he is completely healthy. 

THIS. 
THIS I am thankful for. 

Not just the sleep.
Though I know my mamas can give me a 'hallelujah' in agreement that naps are something we are always thankful for! 
let me hear 'em!

But beyond the sleep, 
I'm thankful for the life. 

I'm thankful for his life. His breath. His chest rising and lowering. His little sleep sighs. His twitchy eyes as he dreams. His tiny fingers gripping the life out of his blanket. His puffy lips and cheeks and small quivering chin. 

I'm thankful for all of it! 

May I always, always thank and praise the Giver of life for this little one's life. 

Because we know: God gives and God takes away. 

And this time, He chose to give. 

The last week has been a whirlwind of fear, sorrow, confusion, joy, revelation, frustration, exhaustion, anger, beeping, poking, prodding, testing, talking, learning, questioning, praying, crying, sleeping, waking, missing, and so on. 

I didn't know what Meningitis was. So when we sat in the E.R last Friday night with our sick little 3 week old I stared at the Doctor waiting for him to follow that word with an explanation. But all he said was:

"So, this is bad news"

I guess my face did not yet reflect that of a mother receiving bad news like "your son has meningitis"

Then he went into more detail about what Bacterial Meningitis was and why they were pretty confident of the diagnosis due to the initial results of a spinal tap they had done. 

Then my reaction was more appropriate. Then the tears came. They weren't hard-coming, as much of the time so far at the hospital they had been flowing in constant streams; as an hour earlier I had to watch them fold my sweet baby, restrain him and poke him to pull spinal fluid from his back. 

That was not easy. None of it is easy. 

It's 2 am. I haven't slept a full 8 hours the last 5 nights combined. 

So I cried. 

When you hear statements like:

"This could have been tragic."
"It's good you caught this so quickly"

You cry. You cry thinking of what could have been. What might be. 

"20 days of IV antibiotics."

A guttural sound exited my mouth at that point. 

And I cried. 

20 days!? I was upset about the original 48 hours of observation. But 20 days! My baby is barely 20 days old! 

The clock now shows somewhere around 3 maybe 4 am, who can remember!? 

That was a long night, a dark and scary night. And over the next 2-3 days I watched my little boy cry in pain, fight fevers of 101, 102 and 103+. I watched helplessly as he was pricked, tested, woken from much-needed sleep continuously - and I wept. I prayed. I sang. I hurt. 

A mother helpless to do anything for her child is like no other pain. 

But I wasn't alone. 

Never have I experienced the body of Christ so powerfully as this past week. 

Prayer. Encouragement. Support. Love. Concern. 

All of it. 

"I'm pounding the gates of heaven for Charlie"

Those were the words from a dear friend. And we felt that. 

There were people praying for this little boy from all over the map. We felt the Holy Spirit sustaining us despite little-to-no sleep and seemingly fewer satisfactory answers to all of our questions. 

We saw God use the prayer of the Saints as He healed our sweet Charlie. 

Healed him. He gave Charlie life. He gave us life. 

The long and the short from that week is that our prayer, from the first diagnosis, was that the bacterial cultures would show the least-serious bacteria so that it would be treated easier, the antibiotic course would be shorter, the possible side effects would be less-severe and so on. 

What grew in the cultures? 
Nothing. 
No.Bacteria.Grew. 

PRAISE THE LORD. 

Our initial response, unfortunately was not praise, but confusion. 
What was missed? What bacteria grows but isn't visible? What does this mean? 

Our response should have been recognition of God's hand moving in the life of our son, but we didn't go there first. Shame on us. 

The rest of the week was spent being observed, Charlie getting a regular course of antibiotics just in case there was bacteria to be killed.

Every 6 hours he received those meds. 
He hated it. 
He screamed and cried and wiggled. 
I hated watching him like that just as much as he hated getting them. 

Waiting. Lots of waiting. We waited for the results of viral testing that was done to be thorough in their search for the cause of an extremely high white count in his CSF and all other signs that pointed to Bacterial Meningitis. 

Our newest prayer: POSTIVE viral cultures. 

I know that seems odd... who prays for a POSITIVE test result that tells you your baby has viral meningitis. 

We do! Because if those came back positive than it was pretty certain NOT bacterial meningitis.

This meant lower risk. 
It meant healing. 
It meant no more antibiotics. 
It meant we could go home! 

Thursday morning at 4 am the nurse came in to talk to a very tired, nursing mother (me) and told us the initial tests have come back and they are POSITIVE. 

This time we did Praise! We rejoiced. We smiled. 
despite the exhaustion and the fact that once again I was watching the sun rise from a hospital room window. 

But that sun rose on a very, very good day! 

That day, at noon,

WE.WENT.HOME

God answered prayers this week. 
For that we rejoice. 
To HIM be all the glory. 

All signs seemingly pointed to Bacterial Meningitis, but at the end of the day Viral Meningitis was our result. 

And while a sick baby is always sad and while those days were hard, we praise God for His protection and His hand that sustained us, all of us. 

In closing:

Thank you. 
Thank you to every person who prayed, encouraged, visited, brought meals / snacks / balloons, sent notes and messages, checked in on us via phone/text/email etc., gave suggestions, offered support in so many different ways and so on. 

YOU were used by God to help and sustain us. YOU were used mightily. 
Thank you. 

I want to forget a lot about this week. 
But I will never forget how God moved and those he used in the process.