67 Days of pure Grace....

Halloween has come and gone and so has Thanksgiving. We have been so blessed by God to have had these days with her. I took Rabecca to the doctor on December 3rd 2007 to have a check up and wewere hoping to get her first vaccinations. This was supposed to be a happy day for me, another milestone that Becca has made it through. I was alone with her at the doctor's office for the first time ever. Her father usually made it a point to come with me, but on this particular day he couldn't work his schedule around it and he had to work. As I took rabecca in the office I found myself sitting in the corner with her wrapped very tightly in her clothes and 2or 3 blankets that were threw over her face. I was protecting her fromany form of sickness, cold or even a small child with germy hands. We went in and I unwrapped her and took off her clothes so that they could take her temperature. It was a mere 95.0 degrees. Not even close to the "normal". As I was getting her dressed to take her to the room to be checked I noticed that her beautiful olive complication was now a pale white, like a toddler would be if they were feverish and sick. Kris Barends, her doc, came in and looked at her and I began to tell her that we had to begin giving her some pedialyte because she wasn't taking her formula very well and I didn't want her to get dehydrated and I had to up her O2 (oxygen level). "That was the right thing to do, she needed the liquid and the oxygen as long as she was comfortable with it." she told me. Then she said to me, and I will never forget the look on her face nor the tone in her voice, " Julie this is going to be a tale -tell week for Rabecca. She is either going to pull through this or we are going to be faced with the inevitable. I am going to change her milk and see if that will help her, I also want her to be put on the feeding tube. We will use the NG like she used her 2nd and 3rd days after she was born." I think that I was so shocked that I wasn't phased at that time. I just got her dressed and waited for the new milk and the things that I would need for inserting the NG tube. I had requested that Julie Clark come by and insert the tube. She was the only one that I completely trusted with my daughters life. I wanted the best care for her and I knew that julie would give it to her. She had treated Rabecca lie she belonged to her and I could tell that Becca loved her too because she was one of the very few that Becca would respond to when she spoke her name. Becca would lok around to see if she could see her when Julie came in. It was very comforting to me. Julie came by after her shift was over and she had been to see all of her patients. When she came in she not only was prepared to treat Rabecca, but she was prepared to help my other 8 year old daughter get through the procedure too. She brought in Emily a littlest pet shop set complete with swimming pool, house and lots of critters to play with while she worked on Becca. She took that money out of her own pocket to comfort my child!! What a blessing she is! Emily ran off to play and Julie inserted the NG tube into Rabecca carefully explaining it to me just in case I needed to do it again myself. I noticed that as she was putting in the tube that her eyes were watering as if she was fighting back tears and didn't want me to notice. When she was done we sat down and talked and drank a tall Starbucks coffee and watched becca. She was so stressed. Her throat hurt from the tube and I was the only comfort that she could find and even sometimes then she couldn't get comfortable. Uncle Mike and Aunt Sheila came by to visit her, but could only stay for a minute. Mike and Sheila both left in tears because they couldn't take the pain that she was obviously in. You never realize how helpless you can feel until you see a child in pain and know there is nothing that you can do about it. She finally settled down and rested as much as she could during the night. I made sure that every 3 hours she was fed and it would take me about 30 minutes to feed her properly then change her and lay back down with her. That was something that we did ever since she came home, so I was getting a 1hour and 30 minutes in between times of feeding to rest with her. It was a lot of lost sleep that I was proud and very willing to give up. The next days to come are going to be the hardest....