Hillsboro Christensens: January 2014

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Once we felt a little better we finally got to see Jared's family. They had been here visiting from Ohio for 1 week before we got to see them. We got to see Frozen, we went swimming, rock climbing and bowling.

It just gets worse...

Brinley was really sick the day after Christmas and the next day got even worse. Craig took her into the ER and her oxygen was 75 (VERY LOW). They put her on oxygen and gave her an IV. The nurse first tried the IV in her inner elbow. After a couple unsuccessful tries she put it in Brinley's hand. Brinley got a teddy bear that she proceeded to love on the whole time. I had spent the entire day Thursday in bed and was extremely sick still. They needed to admit Brinley but that hospital didn't have a pediatric unit. We needed to transfer her to OHSU Doernbecher but her oxygen was too low for us to drive her. They called an ambulance and after a couple hours of waiting they arrived to transport her. I traded with Craig and rode with her. She had pneumonia from the flu. She was in their regular children's hospital for about 8 hours but her oxygen was still really low so they transferred her down to the Pediatric ICU for a day and a half, and then back to the regular unit for a day. It was the most miserable thing ever! She was on 15 liters of oxygen so it was blowing VERY hard in her nose and that made her feel like she couldn't breath so she was trying to rip it out. She did alright for how miserable the whole thing was. I went down to their ER for 4 hours one night while Craig stayed with her. My dad was an angel watching the other kids in our contaminated home. He's now been fevered and sick for 4 or 5 days. Our church friends brought groceries and dinners. It was so hard having her so sick and she only wanted me and I couldn't even sit up. We were in isolation in the hospital so everyone had to gown up every time they came in and throw away the gowns and masks every time they left. On Christmas Eve I was warming up a bottle for Paige and spilled boiling water all over my hands. That was almost 2 weeks ago and they are still bad. They blistered and have now split. It was just one thing after another but it's almost over. We're mostly well and getting better. I have so much more sympathy for anyone with a child in the hospital. Especially cancer patients that are always there. It is MISERABLE!!!!! Hopefully this will be our last experience with it.

In the ambulance...

Feeling better...

Coming home...

Christmas

We got the flu the weekend before Christmas. I spent about 2 weeks in bed. From now on we will all be getting flu shots every year. Thankfully we all felt alright for Christmas day and the kids got used to Grandma and Grandpa in their masks.