Julia... our Sweet Jewelsie Bugaboo

Last week our Julia got sick, very sick. It was so sad. The picture below shows a bit of how she felt... but it got worse than this, much worse. She had the croup, which can cause high fevers but her fever kept going up, and on the 5th day (saturday) it went up to 105.5. I didn't believe it, so I took it again: it was right. I called the Dr. and he told us to take her to the Phoenix Children's Hospital ER. He told me they would need to do testing to find out what was wrong because the croup shouldn't last so long and shouldn't cause this high of a fever for so long. I hung up the phone and cried.... 2 weeks prior I had been in with Eliana to the dr. and he showed me the mortality rates for the flu by month, this year. Julia hasn't had the flu shot so that's all I could think of, I know, probably sounds a little or a lot paranoid, but I still couldn't help think of it. She was so so so sad looking and burning up. We gave her more medicine, Christian and Charlie gave her a blessing and we headed to phoneix. By the time they got us into triage and hour and a half later, her fever was down just a little , to 104.5. They gave her more medicine for her fever and then poked and proded, taking urine via catheder and blood out of her sweet little hand so they would have a line in her if they needed it. They did a neck x-ray. They treated her croup with a breathing treatment and steriods. They said all the testing turned out well and that her virus was just abnormal but that she should be fine. We left the hospital at 3:30 am. Sunday was a hard day... she cried much of the day. But by Monday afternoon she started to bounce back. Today they called and said the urine culture came back positive, so she has a UTI, which explains the high fever that wouldn't go away (although it did after Sunday).

Even though she was so sick, she was still so sweet. She slept with us a few nights (which she has never done before) and when she was thirsty, she'd ask for a drink, I'd give it to her and she'd say "thank you mommy." every time, not kidding, in the middle of the night, when she was sicker than sick. What a sweet girl. Yesterday I sneezed, she said, "you okay mommy? " Sweet. Sweet. Julia is our Jewel . I feel SO SO SO blessed to have her in our family. We love her so much.

This is her tonight. This is more like our little Jewel!

Oh and I read a very sad but uplifting story about a family that lost their 8 week old baby to pertusis. I read it and cried. Life can be SO HARD. I felt even more grateful for my girls and their health, grateful for our Heavenly Father's plan and my knowledge of it. Life truly is a miracle and God is GOOD! If you want to read that story (be prepared to cry) click here and start reading the posts starting after Dec. 24th.