12 Days?!?!

Has it really only been twelve days since I last posted?!?! It feels like two months has passed in that short amount of time ...

Last week was a hard week to say the least. We thought we had finally figured out the reason for Matt's ongoing fever, fatigue and general not feeling well ... Monday bloodwork confirmed he had Mono. The doctor also ran some blood work to check his liver because of all the ibueprofen he had been taking. Well, in that blood work, his creatinine level (kidneys) was out of limit (lab talk for not normal). So Wednesday, more blood was drawn and Matt had an ultrasound to check to make sure his liver wasn't enlarged. The liver looked fine, but the creatinine level was higher. The docotor tells Matt to take Thursday and Friday off of work to rest and come back Friday for another blood draw.

Okay not so bad so far ...

Thursday I pack up Ethan and I and we head over to Max's house for our first day of babysitting. We decided their house would be better for a few days until Matt was feeling better. Max was wonderful ... Ethan was not ... in fact by about 11AM I knew that something was wrong with him and called Matt to come get him. I figured he could give him some Tylenol and Ethan would nap better at home. By 11:45AM Ethan is non-stop tears and getting warmer by the minute. I call Matt to come now and then call to see when we can get him into the doctor. Matt gets to the house, literally grabs Ethan and heads out the door to go to the doctor's office. By the time they get to the doctor's office, Ethan has a fever of 105.6 and is having difficulty breathing. The doctor sends them to the ER.

Meanwhile I'm trying to find someone to watch Max, not knowing just how bad off Ethan is ... I just knew something was wrong. My SIL, Julie ... who I owe an entire post of gratitude to, shows up to watch Max so I can be with Ethan. I get a hold of Matt who is upset and informs me to meet them at the ER.

To keep this from being a boring medical novella, Ethan is diagnosed with Croup and he and I stay overnight in Pediatrics for monitoring. He is pretty well back to normal, just a bit of a nagging cough ...

Now back to Matt. As we get home Friday afternoon, Ethan goes straight to bed, I go for a shower and bed. An hour later Matt tells me he's on his way to check himself into the hospital for some monitoring. He'll probably be there overnight. Just call him when I wake up ... he was seriously this non-chalant about the whole thing.

Well overnight turns into 4 nights in the hospital being treated for Vasculitis. Isn't this a fun lesson in medical terms?!?! Basically it's an auto-immune disorder that effects your blood vessels .... in Matt's case it was his kidneys. So they had him on IV steroids and a host of other drugs. Amazingly, the first night in the hospital he felt better than he had in weeks.

We're still waiting on the kidney biopsy for confirmation, but both our family doctor and the nephrologist feel confident that this is what he has and they are treating him appropriatley. And while he's not recovered and won't be for a long while, he feels so much better and has more energy every day. He'll be even happier when they lower the steroids (or are gone altogether) and his major swelling goes down.

I'm just happy we're all back together under one roof and on our way back to normal. This had to be one of the hardest weeks of my life and I'm so glad it's behind me.

A big thank you to each of you who helped us out ... we are so blessed with family and friends and could not have made it through nearly as "easily" as we did without you.

Hopefully next week will be full of boring ol' mundane everyday life ... the stuff that I love to talk about!

Good Night.