wacky reunions...

so we had a reunion today that pretty much no one in duke hospital wanted to have--as we were entering the hall to find our room (we had just been admitted--will explain in a sec), we ran into all of our cardiology team doing rounds and they were at the room of our wonderful PICU roommie, who was also here. I said, "wow, its like old home week...but i might cry because none of us wants to be here all together so I am just going to keep on walking to our room..." At that point, Heath was still in a pretty good humor and had actually been giving me a speeding lecture in the car and telling me about the places he wanted to go in the hospital and that he wanted the "orange room." There are so many things that feel "wrong" about all of these statements, but i guess they also just remind me that this is going to be part of our life...

so, you are wondering why we are here at Duke, in this very orange room (of course they got one for us, bless them:)? Heath has had a fever for over 5 days straight. He had had a mild fever/ear infect/cough off and on for the last 3 weeks, but since Sunday this had been different. We came in here to duke outpatient on Tuesday for bloodwork/xray and at that point they said, "you know, maybe we should just admit him for a 3-day IV antibiotic..." Since we still thought it could be viral, we decided to see if it would get better over a day or so and then make the decision. He seemed so much better the next morning and I said, "take us off your radar" to our wonderful Duke team, only to have him spike a 102.8 fever an hour later. when it spiked again today, we decided it was time to come on in. he has been as up and down here as at home, only now he is upset about being in the hospital and being poked (but they did get the IV in ONE(!) stick!!!) and looked at all the time. he did enjoy a fun trip up to see the helicopter on the 9th floor with his dad...step by step.

the initial bloodwork has come back and it looks like he actually does have an infection. they are not sure where yet, so we're doing all sorts of tests/cultures to figure that out. so, we're hitting it with 2 broad spectrum IV antibiotics for a couple days and are hoping that that knocks out whatever it is. SO, as much as we didn't want to drag him in here, we know we need to be here.

as we walked down the halls this morning, we ran into nurses, doctors, social workers, child life specialists, nurse techs, other patients--and our nurse turned out to be a wonderful guy who Chris went to HIGH SCHOOL with in Black Mountain (we reunited with him the last time we were in here too). these are reunions that we'd rather not have--I always prefer to see these wonderful people in target or in a local restaurant--but I am reminded how grateful we are to be in this world-class place with these wonderful, caring people trying to figure out what's happening with our very special guy.

daddy is home taking care of getting our girl to bed and a sermon written. so my sweet fella and I are going to snuggle in the hospital bed and watch some basketball.
as always, we are grateful for your thoughts and prayers and keeping us company (and the wonderful activities from my bible study friends today--bless you!) on this wild and crazy journey. we'll keep you updated.