Our brave little girl

It has been a difficult week for everyone, but most especially the bravest of all of us, the not so little anymore Genevieve.  As I write this right now she is peacefully asleep next to me and it makes my heart so happy to see her getting better.  Having told this story now seemingly a hundred times to all the doctors I'll tell it one more time here for posterity sake...

Sunday night Evie complained of a sore throat as she went to bed.  (She by the way had just had a very exciting evening out with Patrick and went to see Tin Tin in 3D)  On Monday morning she woke up still with a sore throat but seemed OK to go to school.  She was very tired all day and stayed so through the evening but couldn't sleep hardly at all.  On Tuesday my mom took care of her for us because she seemed too sick for school.  During the day she started to hold her head funny and complained of pain in her neck.  The pain got worse and worse, to the point where she was complaining about bumps in the road.  It didn't seem to be getting better so Patrick took her to the ER on Tuesday night (and was therefore up all night with her again) and they diagnosed her with toriculous (basically a spasmed neck)  The next morning she wasn't feeling better and had a fever so I took her to her pediatrician's office where her doc suspected there was something more than just a spasm going on and decided to check her into the hospital.  So around 11 am on Wednesday we were checked in and the long series of pokes, prods and check outs began for Evie.

They needed to put her on an IV and draw blood so a special person that is here just to help her feel better explained the process and then told her if she was really brave she would get her a barbie.  If braveness is measured in barbies Evie must be one heck of a brave girl because she now has 5 of them and a barbie mini cooper to boot.  Throughout all of the first day she was as good natured as can be even though she was clearly in a lot of pain.  On Wednesday night they decided to do a CT scan, which was very scary for both Patrick and I, to try to figure out what was causing the neck position and the pain.  In the end they found an abscess in the back of her throat and the decision was made for her to have surgery to drain it on Thursday.  She was so very brave as we wheeled her down the halls and through the hospital in her bed to the OR.  I think saying goodbye to her as they took her in for surgery was one of the scariest things I have ever done.

Surgery went well but (and we didn't find this out until later) the surgeon had to dig around a fair amount in her throat trying to get all of the abscess.  This made it so that she was in even worse pain than before come Friday.  It was made all the more difficult because on Thursday night they had to replace her IV twice.  By Thursday night we had a routine down.  I stayed with Evie during the day usually with my Mom or for awhile with my aunt Lisa and then we all hung out together in the afternoon and evening and then I went over to my parent's house to care for Izzy and Patrick stayed to keep her happy and comfortable at night, then around 6 am I would come back and we would start all over again.  On Friday we had so much trouble with the pain and she was just miserable, it was so very hard to watch and so very frustrating because all I wanted to do was to make the pain go away.  Mom was taking care of Izzy so I was all by myself during some of the worst of the pain and it made me realize just how important it was to have other family around too.  All day Friday she was also spiking fevers so there started to be some concern that in fact there was something else going on instead of or aside from the abscess. 

Because the fevers weren't going away we had first an infectious disease doctor and then a cardiologist come to see her on Saturday.  They thought maybe she had something called kawasaki's disease...  They did an ecocardiogram of her heart and found everything to be ok and at around noon yesterday she stopped spiking fevers, which was a really good sign.  As of today her fevers are down and her pain seems to be improving somewhat and she can move her neck a little so they are now thinking that there isn't anything else wrong with her, thank goodness.

The whole experience has been such a strange and scary time warp.  I think though scary experiences have a lot to teach us.  From my standpoint it has made me acutely aware of just how lucky I am to have such an amazing husband in Patrick, he is the most loving and thoughtful father a kid could ever ask for (and he even remembers to bring me exactly the coffee I love when he goes out).  I am also so lucky to have a mother who is not only caring but so very knowledgeable and without whom I think this whole experience would not have been scary but terrifying.  More than anything the past few days have made me appreciate Genevieve, she is such a wonderful little light in this world and is so very brave and has such a great attitude even despite the pain and the pokes and the prods.  Hopefully she will continue to feel better and we will get her back home soon.  As funny as it sounds I am looking forward to the normal and mundane more than I ever thought I would....