From speed bump to brick wall

Its 2am and I should be sleeping, but I can't. I have just settled into my lovely room on the pediatric floor of St Vs hospital-yes in Billings, not Denver. My poor little Sam is sleeping contently (after hours of crying from being poked and prodded) in the PICU. Let's back track a bit shall we...

Today was going well-I was very productive getting things ready for us to hit the road to Denver. We were on task to get a good nights sleep and head out after dropping Charlee off at school. Sam had been doing great-happy and alert. Smiling and cooing as she does all the time now. She did have that little cough-about 2-3 dry coughs every hour or so, but she appeared unaffected by them. I fed her at 6:30pm and she was up and alert for an hour or so, then fell asleep. When I went to wake her up for her final feeding before tucking her in for the night, I noticed her color was not good. She looked cyanotic (blue) and when I picked her up she was very warm. I took her temp and sure enough she had a fever-101.2. I offered her the bottle and she wasn't interested in eating at all. In fact it caused her to cough and now the cough was very moist and didn't sound good at all. Shortly after that she coughed a couple times, gagged and spit up a good amount of frothy bloody liquid. If I never have to witness/experience that again, it will be too soon.

Needless to say, we shoved our sleeping kids in the car, packed Sam in her seat and headed for the ER. I was a bit of a mess by now-all I could think about was that the cardiologist said this was the exact scenario we were trying to avoid by getting her heart surgery done before cold/flu season. She can't be on oxygen or it can push her into congestive heart failure. This is not good when you have respiratory disease/pneumonia. I know enough to know that her poor color and the fluid noise in her cough, she had serious airway issues-let alone the stress on her heart. For the first time since she came into this world I was terrified that we might lose her. We dropped the older kids at Grandma Kathys house and kept going. Our usual team of support met us there-my parents, my brother, and Theriaults. They are the people we wake up when things hit the fan. We spent very little time in the ER as they wanted us up in ICU asap. Once up here (4th floor-pediatrics), the poor baby got picked on a lot. IV catheter, blood draw, urinary catheter. And just as a side note, despite not being well, she is one strong little goober. She was hard to contain-think alligator role. At least her color was looking much better at this point and she didn't cough up any more blood. After all that I looked over the doctors shoulder as he evaluated the chest xrays. I knew what he was going to say-yep pneumonia within about 60-70% of her right lung field. Great...now we have to get through this ordeal before we can get back to fixing her heart. Of course for now all we need to focus on is getting her through this. If she doesn't maintain her status she is at now, which is acceptable, they will have to intubate and put her on the ventilator. I am really praying that doesn't need to happen. The doctor sent out blood work to determine if its viral vs bacterial-this will take a couple days. He expects she will be in the ICU at least 2-3 days but likely longer. So if you need to find me-I will be here.

I find it interesting...this morning when they bumped her surgery to Friday, I figured it was God's way of giving her one more day to clear up the dry cold cough. But now I see that it was all about us not leaving town last night. If we had started down the road-this would have all taken place about Sheridan. That is not where we would have wanted to be when an ICU was needed. I still wonder why God didn't just take the cough away or heal her heart defects, but His will is perfect and His ways are not our ways, so I just have to trust Him. My fear has subsided but concern still remains. I don't like set backs and changes in plans especially when the health of my baby is on the line. I have to pray for faith and trust-that God is still in control even when I have none in the situation. Sam will still need open heart surgery in the near future, but the specifics are now up in the air. I'm just focusing on getting her through this and then we will take the next step.

Thanks to all our friends, family and acquaintences for your prayers and support. We will continue to need it. Please continue to pray for our little Samantha-that she recovers from the pneumonia quickly and without complication. And pray for us, that we don't stop trusting our God! After all, He did create her and she is His child. We know she is in His hands and He has a plan in all this. Good night for now. I will keep you all posted.