Return Trip, Illness, Decisions

Though I could go into greater detail, our return trip had some tearful goodbyes, mild logistical challenges, and some good conversations and realizations.  Among realizations, it occurred to me that while Dr. Gebb was likely wrong and Grace had almost certainly passed away before I walked over to Tella to pray for Grace a final time in the recovery room, that may have actually been when Abigail was passing.  Again, there's no way to know--Abigail had a good, normal heartbeat and normal readings after the procedure, but she passed away sometime between then and Friday when they checked, and if it was due to the pressure drop, it could well have been about then.  

As far as other notable return trip occurrences: poor Simon seemed to be getting sick by the time we got onto our last flight.  He was draining heavily and felt warm to us.  He also seemed to get progressively more miserable on the car ride home and had a slight fever by then (we brought a thermometer along).  We were able to give him some Tylenol and also to pull over to get him a good supper at Applebee's in McPherson.  Both of these seemed to help in the short term.

That night he was so congested that he seemed to be having a bit of trouble breathing.  I couldn't tell if it was in his lungs at all, but it seemed limited to his congestion.  His fever was also rolling around 102-103, even with Tylenol.  Motrin stopped it cold, though.  From what we could tell, it currently didn't seem like he needed seen at the ER, so we let him sleep in bed with us so we could monitor him and waited until the next morning.

The next day he was also not doing great, and while I wanted to wait until Monday to let his usual pediatrician see him, there was a walk-in clinic in town that was open for another hour when I thought to look them up and check.  After chatting it through with Tella, we got him seen out there.  It turns out he had a double ear infection that was likely caused by a different, viral infection.  They prescribed an antibiotic and suggested probiotics and infant Zyrtec.  We used these to help Simon get some more sleep, and I started to feel sick.  By the next day (Monday), I was getting quite ill and felt bad for what poor Simon had likely been going through the previous days.  I realized why he wasn't swallowing anything, as the back of my throat felt like it had shards of glass in it.  I was also experiencing that fun whole body ache that occurs during the generalized immune system response along with the general exhaustion that can occur.

At this point, despite being ill, I had to make quite a few calls to set up the induction for Tella, handle several insurance and other matters, and to wrap-up things from our recent trip while packing for a couple days' stay at the hospital for Tella's upcoming induction.  We also had to start discussing what we wanted to do with the girls' bodies as far as burial vs. cremation and if we wanted to have a memorial of some kind.  Since we hadn't decided what we were doing for ourselves (burial vs. cremation), it was a bit of a hard conversation to start.  Unfortunately, we needed to make those decisions somewhat rapidly now for at least our two girls.  With a sick and miserable Simon needing constant attention and wanting frequently held by me along with me being sick and needing to get a lot done, it was a very rough day.  Though it thankfully kept me too busy to dwell in grief, it was extra hard in those instances when I did switch over to processing grief.  That kind of grief was already very hard on me, but when my body felt like absolute trash and I had no energy to boot, it made it uniquely challenging to sit in and work through.  At least once, I found myself wondering how Job did it in the Old Testament.  I only lost two kids and was sick--he lost everyone and was majorly ill with painful boils etc.  I could get how he didn't curse God, but I could understand why he might be tempted to just lay down and die.  I wasn't depressed or feeling a desire to lay down and die myself, to be clear, but I didn't want to imagine what it would be like to add more death and physical pain to what I was already experiencing.  It would be more challenge than I think anyone would want to have.