A Sick Boy, A Super Dad, and A Ball Game - Lord Willing

It's a crazy crazy crazy crazy day in our household. Tonight, for the first time since the scheduled June 6 start date, our little guy is getting to play t-ball! For six looooooong rainy weeks, he has waited patiently and sometimes not so patiently to finally get to don his uniform and take the field. (He is asking me how much longer every 10-20 minutes. This can get a little annoying, but honestly I love it.) He has wanted to play ball since he was old enough to talk and now the night is finally here - a double header!

My husband will be coming home early to take him. Originally I was to take him to his first game and hubs would show up for the second after work, but Dalton (our 10-y-o) has come down with the meanest sickness he has had in at least 4 or 5 years. He is vomiting, even water, and his fever has reached a whopping 104 degrees! (This is particularly concerning to us, because as an infant he spent his very first Christmas Day in the emergency room when he fell semi-conscious due to a fever reaching 107. His body does not fight fevers very efficiently.) So I am not willing to leave the room from him until he begins to improve enough to retain liquids. The doctor is not sending us to the ER for now, but is prescribing a medication to help with the nausea in hopes of keeping him hydrated while "waiting out the bug."

In the meantime, hubby just went back to work this week after nearly 4 weeks off for bad weather (he runs a construction company) and his morning started off with two trucks stuck in the mud for two hours so far. This means the concrete is setting up INSIDE of the drum while everyone scrambles to figure out what to do. It's several thousand dollars worth of concrete sitting there, the job was already started so he can't quit midway through, but he can't eat the cost of it either. (These NO-FAULT situations are the worst, because a decision can't be made until everyone agrees on who will pay for it.) Through all of this, he is trying SO HARD to resolve it in time to actually make money today so his guys can get paid, and yet make it home in time to ensure our son's dreams of his very first big ball game are not dashed. His priorities were not always so aligned. I am both proud and IMMENSELY grateful that he is making such a hard effort on such a hot and problem-filled day!

As nutty as all of this sounds, it is a life style that we have lived for quite some time. It is stressful, and often quite aggravating, but it no longer throws us into panic mode. It's actually become the kind of routine we have become accustomed to. Not every day, thank goodness. But often enough to make us realize that EVEN this kind of a day will be O.K. in the end. Or it won't. It may stay terrible and get even worse. But even then, God will have His way. It will ultimately be what is best for us. And it will teach us something more about Him if we let it. That is the part we have to constantly remind ourselves. We are learning the best response is to just say "oh, well" and try to smile.

And, hey, at least it's not raining!

Edit to Add:

Dalton's nurse called and wanted us to get to a particular intermediate emergency facility. (Like an after hours, with more x-ray technology and where he could stay overnight if needed, but not one of our major hospitals.) She called ahead to tell them he was coming because the pediatrician did think he needed to be seen sooner rather than later.

Everything is fine. They are glad we came in tonight as opposed to tomorrow because Dalton was beginning to dehydrate. Thankfully, we should be able to treat him with nausea medication as opposed to IV since we caught things early. Hopefully, with the medication, he will be able to retain his fluids and his fever reducer more effectively. (His temp was VERY high.) He is now snoring peacefully while I prepare him a fruit smoothie. (He's had nothing to eat in 3 days and wanted something a bit more substantial than water, now that he's on the medication.)

One big blessing was that the physician who saw us was the same surgeon who sewed up our younger son's lip when he fell against a swing set three years ago. In our town of nearly 100,000, I know that God orchestrated that. He didn't remember us until I reminded him how shocked I had been to learn they use cocaine as a blood vessel constrictant in treating bloody wounds. It was nice to have someone treating Dalton who we had already had such a great experience with. He is a very compassionate doctor toward his patients and their families.

We arrived home from the doctor simultaneously to my husband pulling in from the game with Justice. He was every single tiny bit as excited as I hoped and assumed he would be! He has relayed all the details of all the individual plays to each one of us separately and to Grandma by phone. And he's already counting the days (by each twenty minute increment) until Thursday night's practice!