Well, February started out great with a visit from my sister, Sharon, and her daughter, Savannah. Since my mom is away in India on a mission for the next year, she could not come down to help out after Colton was born. Sharon and Savannah graciously flew down from Michigan and stayed for 5 days. It was wonderful to see them! Trey and Jackson adored them as well.
On Valentine's Day, Erik's Mom flew in from Florida. Things started out great, but turned ugly quickly (as most of you know) with the beginning of Erik's scary infection.
If you didn't get the story, I will sum it up in as little detail as makes sense. Sunday evening, Erik had a bump the size of a golf ball on his elbow that was very painful. I told him to quit being a baby and go back to bed. When he was in such severe pain and had a fever of 103.5, he went to the ER. They diagnosed bursitis and sent him home on antibiotics. Within a few hours, the swelling was the circumference of a frisbee on his arm with streaking toward his heart. He went back to the ER and they admitted him to start IV antibiotics. The swelling increased so that eventually his arm was double the size it normally should be, hence VERY painful.
They tried to aspirate (stick a needle into the elbow and draw out fluid) to aleviate the infection to no avail. The next day they operated on it, removing the bursa and making sure the joint itself was not infected. All of these things combined with the high powered antibiotics should have killed this infection, but it was quite defiant, which caused us a lot of worry and stress. Finally after five days, things appeared to be headed the right direction with his arm when his kidneys started to go into acute failure because of the antibiotics. Because of this, he got fluid in his lungs which led to pneumonia.
After a week in the hospital, he was sent home on oral antibiotics, mostly because we were ready to get the heck out of there. Fortunately, Erik's mom was here for several days while he was in the hospital and then my friends, Patti and Linda, watched our kids so I could be at the hospital throughout. My brother, Steven, was here every day for at least part if not the whole day to help. It was very stressful, especially with Colton being so little and me trying to breastfeed.
We really think now that Erik is mostly better. Everything is healing but not yet healed, but we think it should in the near future. Thank you to everyone who helped out with the kids and those of you who were praying for and thinking of us. I know it helped.
Here is a more recent picture of Colton- he is growing so fast!Also- the three cutest boys in the land!!!
