A Mother's Heart Revealed

I spent the weekend holding my son and praying that I would hear good news. On Friday, he woke up with a horrible cough and didn't feel well. By the afternoon, he was dead tired, running a 103 fever and after arriving at the doctor, he started vomiting. A smattering of tests was run, including mono, strep, flu and staph. He was poked, swabbed, scratched and gagged, but he was too tired to care. They sent us home with a diagnosis of mono.

Saturday morning, the hospital called. "The mono labs actually came back negative," the nurse said. "The Doctor wants to talk to you, so please stay home." The next several hours I spent pacing, crying and going through every scenario in my head of what could be wrong with my baby boy. His whole life he's struggled. His birth was a wreck, he's had surgeries, illnesses, infection after infection, and every health hardship a parent has nightmares about. I just wanted some answers.

Finally at 5:30 Saturday evening, our doctor called. He informed me that our son had positive indicators of every test they ran. Had they run each test solo, not in conjunction with the others, they would have said he had strep. Or mono. Or the flu. But he couldn't have all of them. "What does that mean?" I asked. It means that he has an infection that he can't identify, somewhere in his body (don't know the source) that is sending up red flags against every test they run. So he advised us to see a Pediatric Infectious Disease specialist to see if we can pinpoint what's causing all of this. In the meantime, he's back on antibiotics to suppress the infection and keep him functioning (without antibiotics, he has a constant fever).

I sent my daughter off to her grandparents Sunday so that I could just hold my son and spend the day with him. We cuddled on the couch, he beat me at the Play Station, we made homemade pizza and he even felt well enough to go see "Bee Movie." Spending a day with him was wonderful. He kept saying "Mommm, let go!" when I'd hug him for the 100th time that hour. If only he understood why I needed so many hugs.

Being a mother to this child has been the challenge of my life. Every time something else comes up, I wonder why he has to suffer and struggle. I lay awake at night thinking of what I can do to make his life better, happier, healthier. I want every day to be a good day. When he acts up, I want to just come unglued, because while his temper aggravates me, it aggravates me more that I can't just make him happy all the time!

We are going on a family trip this weekend - just us 4. And I'm SO excited. Spending time with just us, looking at the falling leaves, lazing at the hotel - we're taking him out of school for a couple days next week, which I swore I'd never do! But we all need a chance to just let go and let God. I hope we all get some "Happy" out of it. Lord knows we need it.