Ultimatums: maybe they're a good thing

When your child is sick and you're sleep-deprived and it's 1:30 in the morning and the hospital jail/crib just ain't cutting it, an ultimatum will work with the night nurses. It was either have them call the doctor and have him babysit Micah for the remainder of the night (who wouldn't sleep in the crib and who only wanted to lie on his pregnant mother who couldn't let him sleep on her the way he wanted) or they get us a hospital bed. They got us a bed, and we laid down next to each other and both of us slept the rest of the night. Micah even went right back to sleep after they took his blood. It was a little amazing. At any rate, I know what you really want to hear is how he's doing. Better, it seems. He doesn't have a fever anymore and the doctor says that the swelling in his hand is going down a little bit. Maybe, maybe not, I think. At any rate, the doctor mentioned taking Micah off of the IV and putting him on oral antibiotics. That probably means that he can go home today, but we won't know that until a little later this afternoon or early in the evening. We still don't know what the infection is that caused this and won't, according to the doctor, unless the swelling in his hand doesn't go down within a certain period of time and they have to surgically drain it. If that happens, they'll test whatever's in there to see what it is. Our best guess as to how he acquired this infection is that somehow, in sucking the thumb on that hand, he created some little cut in his nailbed somewhere that we can't see and the infection got in that way. But we'll probably never know that for sure either. It's difficult to be comfortable with the unknown, especially if you don't know if or when it will rear its ugly head and attack your innocent child again. Whenever Micah does get discharged from the hospital, he won't be able to be back at daycare for most if not all of this week, we think, so Tim and I will be back on shifts to try to take care of him and work. As long as he's back at home, I don't think either of us mind. In the midst of everything, I took a couple of pictures of him running around in his hospital gown and will try to post those later today or later in the week, whichever works out. "Thank you" seems utterly inadequate as we know how many people are praying and sending good thoughts our way. We believe that those thoughts and prayers make a big difference, and we're more grateful than we could even type into a blog. We'll let you know more as we know more. Love, Kelly, Tim, and Micah