First Ambulance Ride

 While no one likes being sick, you never realize how serious it is until you are being rushed down to the ER by ambulance with your mircro-preemie. All over a fever of 102.9 When Juliet was released from the hospital, they told us that if she ever got a fever over 100.4, we needed to get her seen by a doctor immediately  because of how fast it can progress in their little systems. Well, we learned the hard way how true that really is. Juliet had a fever of 99.1 at 4pm on April 22nd. We called her doctor and they told us to just watch her. If it stayed around that, we could stay home. As you have guessed, it did not.  By 8pm, her fever was the same but she thew up her her meal and was very cranky. We were checking her fever regularly, but when we went back to check it at 11:30pm, it was up 101.5. Within minutes, she went completely limp and begin having trouble breathing. An ambulance was here within 5 minutes of calling, and it took us only 15 minutes to make the 45 minute commute down to Dell Children's hospital. She had numerous blood tests, chest x-rays and a few other procedures to figure out what was going on.

While it was very scary, we tried to find joy in this trip, as we knew there was a reason God was allowing our little miracle baby to get sick. Our nurse came in to see her, whose name just happened to be Romeo. Then came in the doctor: a tall, blonde man who introduced himself as Dr. Kienstra. Brett and I both knew there was no way this was the same wonderful WOMAN who took care of our Juliet for 119 days while in the NICU. It was, however, her husband. We all had a good laugh about it and I wish I could have been at their dinner table the next night hearing the conversation. It turned out to be just a virus and after 5 hours of observation, we were allowed to come back home. It did however take a toll on her, and she managed to catch a nasty stomach bug, not once, but FOUR times within the next few weeks. She is now put back on lock down at the house until the end of May to allow her system time to recover and heal. This means we missed the March of Dimes walk, as well as the next few weeks of church and fun with friends. While its hard to stay at home 24/7, if that is what our little peanut needs, I will gladly do it without hesitation.