I sent Adam and Tyler to Youth Camp this week and could not wait to get them home! We picked them up and went to have dinner at Tyler's favorite restaurant and Tyler was super tired which is typical after a week basically no sleep and non stop activities. Adam wasn't though which made me a bit suspicious. Then by the time we got home, Tyler was telling me that he didn't feel too good. I chalked it up to exhaustion and put him to bed. Before he got to sleep I took his temp and it was 99.7....this raised my suspicions but I still didn't make too much of it. By morning he was burning up with fever of 102!
This went on all day Thursday....and he developed a cough...this made me more nervous than anything given Tyler's history with asthma and pneumonia....including a 7 day stint in the hospital in 2006. And I began to hear on Facebook and get phone calls from other parents that their kids were sick too...So by Friday his fever was 103.3 and he was getting noticeably worse...I decided to take him in to make sure his lungs were ok before we were caught in the weekend with the ER as our only option.
Our pediatrician is a dear friend and our small group leader at church (we are SOOO blessed to have this man in our childrens lives!) and I have come to know his mannerisms when he's examining our kids and becomes concerned...he gets really quiet for a few minutes...I'm no doc but I would assume he is thinking about what step to take next. He listened to his lungs for a really LONG time...so I was nervous he was gonna mention the "P" word....but NOTHING could have prepared me for what he said next....
"You know, if this was January I'd tell you that Tyler has the flu....but this is NOT flu season....and with all of these other kids I'm hearing about being sick from camp...well, it makes me suspicious. I don't want to alarm you but I also don't want to be naive and think it couldn't happen here....this could be Swine."
Ok, this would be where the world stopped....and everything else he said became mostly a blur.
SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?
So off to the hospital we went to get the nasal swab. To say that we felt like lepers would be an understatement...the moment I handed the lady the papers and she read "H1N1" she seriously did not hide her shock very well...she said something along the lines of, "Oh my, this is the first one of these we have seen and HE NEEDS A MASK NOW!!!" He was masked and whisked away into a separate area faster than we could say nasal swab! The lady that put his bracelet on him commented "Lord, he is burning up!" ...thanks lady! This sent my poor 13 year old brave boy into tears! He was getting scared of the way everyone was acting...and he is also old enough to be aware of the current events going on in the world and the fact that this has been deadly.
I took this time to reassure him that none of this had caught our God off guard! He was still on His throne and still had Tylers life held in the tight grips of his Sovereign Hands! That no amount of fear or worry could change the outcome...only beseeching our Heavenly Father and asking Him to be in every molecule of Tylers DNA and protect his little body from any further advancement ...if in fact this is what we were faced with. He dried his eyes and we went back to get him tested.
The swab was not bad at all....the waiting was HORRIFIC. We sat and waited for results...because if they are positive, you have to get a second swab. Doc Jason called me on my cell to give me the results..."he has tested positive for Type A Influenza." Tyler was right next to me so I tried to put on a brave face (which he later told me didn't work so well) as not to scare him. I really didn't know what this all meant so he told us we had to get two more swabs to send to the CDC for confirmation of the Swine Flu...this was the very first case that came back positive in our city so the hospital didn't know exactly what to do...and filling out that government CDC form with the title "CDC H1N1 Confirmation" across the top felt just a bit crazy to be honest....by the time we left there everyone was staring at us and it was a surreal moment to say the least! So much for the HIPA Privacy Act!
He is on Tamiflu and we are all on it too as a precaution due to his high risk lungs. So we wait till Monday or Tuesday to get the results from the CDC....we would appreciate any prayers we can get for protection over Tyler and our other 2 kiddos! And please lift up the other 65 or so kids from camp that have since tested positive as well! Yep, you heard me right...there have been 65 confirmed cases of Type A Flu just among the kids that were at our Middle School Camp so far! We are praying for protection over all the others and all of our High Schoolers that will be coming home from the same camp a bit earlier now as a precaution.
So for now we wait, pray, and trust!
Before I go, I leave you with....."the great masked one!" He will kill me one day for this I am sure of it! And did you notice his new summer do? Ok, so it's a little mangled after burning up with fever, vomiting, aching, coughing,feeling overall comatose sleeping for 3 days straight and maybe it's just me but I think he is still a handsome little devil even if he does have "the swine!" :-)
"And whatever I do, may it always bring glory to you"
