Thursday, January 3, 2008

Unusual Blessings

Last Saturday night, or really early Sunday morning, Ella woke us up with some horrible coughing. She still sleeps with us, which is a blessing because I'm not sure we would have heard her otherwise. While changing her diaper I realized she was having some mild retractive breathing, which means she was having to work hard to breath, and the breaths were shallow. After debating for a while, John took her to the ER at about 3 a.m.

After they took some vitals and listened to her breathing, John was told it would be 3 hours before a doctor could see Ella. At that point it was 4 a.m. Being the astute mathematician he is, he quickly realized he could bring Ella home and see our brother-in-law just as quickly, seeing as our brother-in-law is a doctor and lives next door and would soon be waking up for church! So he brought Ella home.

We called our personal doctor about 7:30 a.m. and he volunteered to make a house call! What a blessing. He sat on my couch, listened to Ella's crackly breathing, and called in a prescription for an antibiotic, and now Ella is on the mend. She's still coughing, but not crackling!

The next morning poor John had to arise at 3 a.m. again, but this time so he could get to the airport for his flight to The Gator Bowl! True to form, hours after he left the house realized it could start falling apart. Our smoke detector went off a time or two. After a frantic search through the house that yielded no smoke and no fire, we thought it might be a fluke. No. Every few hours the alarm would go off. Actually, all the alarms go off together, so you really have no idea which one is causing the problems.

I got online and got the suggestion to dust the alarms. Fair enough...I located all nine alarms and dusted them. Hey, it seemed to work until....the night of January 1st. The kids were all asleep, I was staying up too late and reading in bed, when the alarm cranked back up and started going off every fifteen minutes...then every ten minutes...then every five minutes. Sounds like labor. I once again was online trying to find a way to simply turn them off, and deal with the problem later. No dice.

Around 2 a.m. I made the decision to pull all the kids out of bed, throw them in the van and head for Mom and Dad's house! I didn't go to my in-laws house next door because they were already overflowing with people since their two daughters were home from college. My parents, on the other hand, were on vacation and had a whole empty house where we could each have a bed. What a blessing!

As we were traveling the hour to their house, Luke, who was in the passenger seat, looked at me and said, " I think I need a barf bag." I pulled over, he opened the door, and emptied his stomach. Can I testify that throwing up on the side of the road is an altogether easier experience than say, in your room on the carpet. After he was sick, he felt just fine the rest of the time. Again, a blessing in a weird situation.

As I neared my parents' home, it occurred to me that they might have locked me out. I had to call my sister who lives nearby, who assured me I could get in, and she was right. In no time at all I had distributed children all around the house and was in bed, asleep. I was awakened by the noise of my kids' excited voices when my sister and her daughters brought us donuts! How nice was that! Another blessing.

We arrived back home at noon, only to find that the alarm was now going non-stop. This time I did take the children to my sister-in-law's home and called electricians, security system people, and no one could help me! I ran through the house putting new batteries in all nine detectors, but it didn't work. I tried turning off the electricity, no good. Finally, in desperation, I yanked one of the alarms and voila' it came off. I finally found the offending smoke detector because when I pulled it off the alarms all stopped! Silence was indeed golden.

Blessings can be all around...you simply have to look for them!

4 comments:

liesel said...

Crazy. What caused the problem? How is Ella now? Funny Luke's timing. And I'm jealous you have family AND a doctor next door.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you fixed the problem!!!

Amanda

Laura Lu said...

OK--WOW! You need to go soak in the tub for awhile! Sorry you had to go through all of that...the other blessing in disguise is that it made a great blog entry! I was reading intently as to what was going to happen next. This "story" was filled with unexpected twists and turns yet short enough to keep my attention span! Thanks! :)

Anonymous said...

Sweet friend,

You have a beautiful grateful attitude through all that you faced! I hope you got to take a nap!

Leslie
www.homeschoolblogger.com/LeslieNelsen