So, Alysha had been sick for almost all of December, and it got exponentially worse Christmas Eve. She was so sick she was sleeping in the back at work on their busiest night of the year. I asked her if she was okay to drive out to our house, and she said yes. Regardless, I waited up for her. She went straight to bed, got up did presents in the morning, and then back to sleep. She was up off and on Christmas day, attempting different foods that she thought she might be able to stomach. Nothing was working. We sent Ben to get many different things to hydrate her and help her stomach. Nothing was helping so she went back to bed. When I got up in the morning she couldn't make it up or down the stairs without getting lightheaded and passing out. We decided to take her to urgent care when it opened, if not the emergency room sooner. We were not going to leave for Crescent City until we knew that she was okay. She told us to go ahead and go, she would just wait until Daylon was at lunch to go to the doctor. All she wanted to do was sleep. I let her sleep until Urgent Care opened and then went down to get her. She tried again to say we should go and just leave her to sleep, so I sent Ben down to carry her to the car. She tried to say no again, but Ben was pretty persuasive. She walked very slowly to the car and we were on our way.
Everything that happened next seemed to take forever and feel like we were in slow motion at the same time. Her blood pressure was super low, so they called an ambulance to take her to the emergency room. I rode with her and was pretty much there as much as possible for the next seven days. SEVEN DAYS! She was in the hospital for seven days and they still aren't sure what caused the infection that sent her body into septic shock. She was literally hours away from dying. It was the scariest time of my life. I didn't let myself think about how sick she was. All I could think about was doing everything I could to make sure she got better. I couldn't do much but be there, so I was. My parents joined us and we waited, watching her get exams, blood tests, ct scans, a picc line, 17 liters of fluid, potassium checks, antibiotics, pain medicine, and her vitals checked every two hours or more. The nursing staff in the PCU at Mercy Folsom was amazing. I didn't even know what a PCU was before last week, and I hope that we never have reason to return. So, our year started off in the hospital, but we wouldn't have thought of being anywhere else.
I think Evan watched more TV last week than his whole four years combined!
Grandma was still recovering from knee surgery and didn't want to bring her crutches on the plane, so she was in a wheelchair for our trip to the Crocker.
Evan was a good helper.
We went for the Norman Rockwell exhibit, which was amazing, but no photos were allowed. This was our favorite piece outside of that exhibit, but the picture doesn't do it justice.
New Year's Eve
Watching Enchanted with Titi
We celebrated east coast time so we could let Titi sleep. We couldn't find an east coast countdown on the awesome hospital cable, so we watched in Spanish.
Beautiful even on day six in the hospital.
Evan ended the night in tears because he couldn't stop playing with the hospital bed. This was the result of many nights off his routine. Time for bed.
The morning of day 8: Woohoo, no PICC line, she is going home!
Evan had to make sure her bed at home was going to be comfortable enough.
It was. She stayed home for a few more days resting and letting her stomach get used to food again. Tonight is her first night back at work, so we will have to see how she is feeling tomorrow.
