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| My poor hubby :( |
I guess I should get around to telling Josh's horrible hospital story. It was such a crazy time and I've been trying to get past it but it seems like we just can't get our family back to 100% healthy no matter how hard I try! It was Friday night three weekends ago when Josh woke up around midnight pooping blood. He claimed it was no big deal. The next morning I went about my usual day because he said he was fine. But he wasn't fine. By 2pm that afternoon he had passed out from the lack of blood and hit his head on the bathroom floor. It took forever for me to talk him into going to the hospital because obviously he wasn't "fine" but he finally consented when I started crying. Briana came to watch the kids so we could go to the ER.
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| We made a bed for Josh on the living room floor and all he could do was lay there. Austin was so worried about his Daddy and wouldn't leave his side. |
Once we got to the ER, he admitted that this was much worse than he was letting on. He was hemorrhaging pure blood from his rectum and it was coming out every 30 minutes. Were in the ER until 11pm when they came and told us they were moving him to Med/Surg where we would be seeing a GI specialist and they would try and figure out where the bleeding was coming from. The CT scan showed that his colon was bulging with blood and they were too scared to do a colonoscopy because they might puncture the colon and cause him to bleed to death.
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| Waiting in the ER for some answers. |
The next 4 days were a blur of doctors, labs, medications, and procedures. Originally they told us that their GI doctors were on strike so they would have to transfer us to another hospital but then a kind doctor took pity on us and our situation and "called in a favor" from his GI specialist friend. We were so grateful because I was literally going insane from bouncing back and forth between the hospital and home and having to drive to a hospital further away would have made it even more crazy! This was just one example of God showering his blessings down upon us though. We had so much help from my family with the kids and our sweet friends in the ward were there for play dates, priesthood blessings, meals, and basically anything else we needed! We were so blessed!
They ruled out ulcers and finally by day 4 made the decision that it was Hemorrhagic Colitis; an infection of the colon that had eaten through the intestinal lining and caused him to bleed out. He was not able to eat or drink anything for those 4 days and he was on heavy doses of IV antibiotics. We both took work off while he was there which only added to the stress. Someone needed to pay for all this stuff and Josh was out of Paid Leave so he was having to take those days unpaid!
Once he was released, the bleeding had stopped but he was still in pain. Sadly he had to go to work the next day and his jerk of a boss made him make up all 40 hours of work in just 3 days! That didn't help his health any. He was a mess. Which left me alone to take care of everything and everyone. I too became a mess but there was nobody there to help or care. It was a very bad week. Oh and did I mention that the night we went into the hospital Austin caught the stomach flu that Eve had just gotten over the week before :(..... So I would spend all day with Josh, catch a couple hours of sleep in the crappy hospital chair, run home to help with the kids early morning and clean my house of all the puke Austin had created, shower, run back to the hospital to be with Josh, and then run back home to help with baths and bedtime. Oh and don't get me started on my whiny Mom and sisters who complained the whole time about what an inconvenience this was for them. I found myself giving my Mom a massage and begging my sisters to have a little compassion on top of it all.... it was awful.
Now that we are on the road to recovery I can't help but feel so extremely grateful to be out of that hell. We are back to focusing on Christmas and all the fun that comes with it! Josh still isn't completely healthy but he is doing better!
I also have to mention that we had a ghost in our house all throughout this time. I'm pretty sure it was Josh's Dad. He showed up a couple days before and scared the crap out of me because I couldn't help but feel like there was someone trying to tell us that something bad was about to happen. You see, we have a decorative lantern in our bathroom on a top shelf that has never been used. It required batteries but I only wanted it for decoration so I never even checked to see if it had any. Well, one day I walked into the bathroom and someone had turned that lantern ON! The kids and I were the only ones home and it was way too high for either kid to reach. Someone had literally flipped the switch underneath the lantern to ON! Then, the next day, someone unplugged all the plugs from our TV and X-BOX upstairs in our room! We knew someone was definitely trying to tell us something but who was it and what were they trying to say? Then, while Josh was in the hospital and my Mom was babysitting, My mom watched someone turn the volume on the baby monitor from low, all the way up to the highest setting!! Then it gets even more spooky. I called my Grandma Wiegel from the hospital to give her an update on Josh and her caller ID showed "Benjamin Investments" instead of Ashly LaFeber. Benjamin Investments was Art's PC company. It was right there and then that I knew it was him stalking us and it didn't surprise me at all! I suddenly understood that he was trying to warn us that something bad was going to happen to Josh and he was trying to help my Mom while she babysat by making sure she could hear the kids! Such an Art thing to do! He was always overprotective while he was alive so it doesn't surprise me that he is watching over us like a crazy ghost now that he is dead..... Apparently he felt like his job was through once we got home from the hospital because we haven't had anything crazy happen since.
Pretty crazy week huh!
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| My sweet friend in the ward took Eve to church with her family because Austin couldn't stop throwing up and my Mom couldn't handle both kids. It was such a blessing! How cute is this picture?! |
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| Even Grandma Helm helped babysit! She also came and spent an entire day with us in the hospital. It was a group effort for sure! |
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| The first day we were all back home, Josh went to work while the kids and I did nothing but relax and watch movies by the Christmas tree, enjoying being a family again. It was so comforting to be together again! It was just sad that Josh was the sick one and he was the one working thanks to his stupid jerk of a boss :( |
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| When he finally came home the kids were ecstatic! They jumped into his arms and were smothering him with kisses!! It was so beautiful to watch. |
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| The next day I asked Austin if he wanted to get out of the house and go to Cooking Class but he said he would rather stay home and make pancakes all day... apparently we weren't done being home together as a family yet :). That was just fine with me! |
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| Of course Eve caught some kind of respiratory virus that day she went to church and it has gone through every single person in our family. It's just one sickness after another! So cuddling has become an every day occurrence around here... |
I am so grateful to be home. I am so grateful Josh is alive (I forgot to mention that the doctors told us he was lucky he didn't end up in the ICU). I am grateful for the help from friends and family, even if it wasn't always given without strings attached. I am just plain grateful we are back to our typical life again! God is good and we have been blessed :).
