{A Recap of Our November}

The month started out like any other ordinary month, but ended with a scary stay at the PICU at Mercy Des Monies! On the very first weekend, we celebrated Papa’s birthday with Meemaw’s famous homemade chicken noodles! Always delicious and we always have the best time with cousins. Such fun memories were made that weekend! The following weekend, I had the opportunity to be a novice judge for the Miss Northern Iowa Scholarship Program and it was such an incredible experience! And by novice I mean the most experience I had to offer was watching Miss Congeniality about a handful of times over the years! I shared this on my social media accounts but I wanted to recap on the blog as well. I learned SO MUCH over the course of that entire Saturday!! The contestants were absolute inspirations and are far beyond their years! Many of these young women are using their hardships, tragedies and LOSS in their lives to try and make the world just a little bit better place to live. They are thoroughly active in their schools and communities, and some of their accomplishments are far ahead many of their peers! It was incredibly humbling to be in their presence and I am so honored to have met them! The girls were mostly judged on a grueling private interview and their talents. Absolutely ZERO percent of their scores are based on “looks” and body type. If you are like me and don’t know much about these types of scholarship programs, then I HIGHLY recommend learning more!!!! It is definitely an experience I feel so fortunate to be a part of and will always treasure!

By the third weekend of the month, Oren became sick. We didn’t know how sick he really was until he started deteriorating quickly while in the hospital. I’ve never really shared this a lot but Oren has asthma. Nothing too crazy, or so we thought anyways. Sometimes he has flare-ups during peak seasonal times but never anything severe…until now. His first day of symptoms started with some wheezing, completely normal for him. We treated with his inhaler but found we were needing to use it quite often (about every hour). He had no other symptoms including no coughing, which usually accompanies his attacks, but was running around as normal. By mid morning the next day we noticed he was working harder to breathe and his oxygen was low. We decided to take him to the ER at KRHC where a chest x-ray found pneumonia. The labs confirmed rhinovirus (a common cold). We were completely shocked because he had no cold symptoms! He was admitted and put on 6 liters of oxygen with nebulizer treatments. By late afternoon, his breathing became more labored and was requiring more liters of oxygen. It was decided to transfer us by ambulance to Mason City for better care. Oren is obsessed with all kinds of large vehicles including ambulances so even though he was sick, he was so excited to ride in the ambulance. He still talks about it every day and carries his ambulance teddy bear everywhere. An experience I know he’ll never forget! While in Mason City, Oren was connected to a Vapotherm machine with max pressure settings and a constant flow of albuterol. After a few hours and a spiked fever of 104, the treatments became no match to his severe asthma attack and he needed more care. In the very earlier hours of November 21st, Oren was life flighted to the PICU at Mercy Des Monies and instantly became the worst experience/weekend of my entire life. Sadly, Oren doesn’t remember his helicopter ride. He was pretty sick and exhausted at this point and adamantly denies riding in it even though he has a teddy bear to commemorate it haha! An experience I know I’ll never forget! When we arrived in Des Monies, Oren was hooked up to a bipap machine with a mask at 65% pressure, a constant flow of albuterol at 20 ml and a number of other meds. He spent 2 long days in this set up mostly sleeping, staying steady with baby step improvements. He hated the mask, it didn’t fit him properly but it was necessary for him to receive the high pressure of oxygen being forced into his lungs. The doctors did everything they could to keep him from being intubated and we are so grateful! A couple of times he would wake up and ask why Eden wasn’t at the doctor’s too. 😢 By the 23rd he finally became more awake and alert. And we quickly fell victim to the rathe of steroid side effects! Three year olds on steroids is no joke! Bless all the doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists that are so caring and understanding to these children!!! On this day he finally started turning a corner and making better improvements. He was switched to a regular cannula with reduced oxygen pressure and started taking liquids orally! We spent the next day in the PICU on regular oxygen and eating solids, making great improvements! By Thanksgiving day we were moved to the peds floor!!! We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! ❤️ Although we missed spending the day with the girls and our families, we knew the health of our boy was improving! The girls were having waaaayy too much fun at Papa and Meemaws house to even miss us! Which we are also incredibly thankful for as well!! We spent 2.5 more days on the peds floor and after a long 8 days total, we finally headed home with a healthy boy and a stronger regimen to manage Oren’s asthma. Through all of this, we are pretty certain Eden had the same virus as Oren during this time but was just hoarse for a few days. So interesting the difference between a healthy child and a child with asthma! We are sincerely thankful for all of the prayers, messages, care packages and gifts we received during this time. The outstanding care from all of the doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists that worked diligently to save our little boy’s life, we are forever grateful. I don’t think I could fully express how thankful we are. Just know my heart is bursting with all the emotions! We will continue to pray that Oren outgrows his asthma someday and that we will never have to relive this nightmare again.

Until next month…