an easter story

i have an easter story.


i have a story of dying and rising. of miracles and almost nevers...
i have an easter story that brings tears to your eyes and a hallelujah to your lips.


this story had to be dug up from my depths. it is painful to go back. i can feel my heart doing a flutter dance in my chest. i walked the razors edge of life and death.. teetered on the precipice. i was gently brought down on the side of life.. and yet saw just enough of death to recognize the pain i didn't have to face.


my easter story starts a little over three years ago. i was a new mom to 7 week old grayson and to my arianna who was two and a half. nate came down with a drop you to your knees case of influenza that march. with grayson slung up in my sling i tried hard to be the gatekeeper of his germs. five nights up with the baby, five days up with the husband... but to no avail. unfortunately arianna caught the flu. this was the very first time she had ever been sick if you can believe that. she had never seen the doctor for anything more than a well child visit and yet here we were.. at the doctor with high fevers and a sad diagnosis.


for a few days the fever was up and down and back up again. i had never seen her sick before. i was a first time mom in my first dark trench looking up at the sky wondering if i would ever see the blue again. a few days in i was back at the doctor as i didn't like the way the fever was continually cycling through high spikes. she was diagnosed with strep throat and we were sent home with a prescription and told the medicine would take 24 hours to show symptom relief... but being that it was friday the doctor said if i was uncomfortable with what i was seeing over the weekend to feel free to take her in to the ER. i laughed in my head. the ER?  who goes to the ER for strep throat? that was at noon.


at 4pm i was rocking and singing to her and when she looked up into my face my blood ran cold. something was wrong. it was as if she was starting to look right through me. i picked her up in my arms and ran to the kitchen calling for nate... words and thoughts flying one into another..
"what should we do?"
"i was just at the doctor-- they said it would take 24 hours..."
"something just feels wrong... i don't know why"
"i hate to spend the money on an ER visit for them to just tell me to take the medicine and wait 24 hours"


he said he would do whatever i thought....
i said maybe we should wait just a little bit longer and see if the medicine kicked in...


and then i heard it.
i heard what i will swear to my dying day was the voice of God himself in my ear. my every thought, my every urge was muddled at best.. i was uneasy. i could feel danger and panic starting to seep in around my corners... and then this voice clear as the morning dawn..


"GO! go now!!! get up and move as fast as you can.. if you do not go this moment you will be one of those women who tells her story of i just wish i would have listened. GO NOW!!!


in the next breath i said "we're leaving! we have to get to the ER . hurry!"
we grabbed the baby, coats and our sick girl and rushed to the hospital.


the minute we got there i could tell something was very very wrong. people wouldn't talk to me or look at me. they were rushing, trying to find veins, taking Xrays, yelling for others to help.
i thought we had strep throat. i still remember i had brought her pink amoxycillin in a little ziploc bag... just sure i would need to give her her next dose soon. it was thrown to the side and not looked at again.


they couldn't find her little veins and i had to sit up at her head singing her bedtime song and stroking her hair to try to keep her calm while they cycled their best through attempting to dig up a place they could get an IV in.


they said we would need to stay overnight. i was surprised. is that really necessary? i thought for sure we would be sent home with a new drug and a new diagnosis..
i had no idea.


they checked us in and sent us upstairs... things did not get better. nate ran out to get us some dinner as we were getting ready to spend the night there.. still not understanding.


no one said what this was. no one said how bad this was. no one told us what was happening...


it was just me and ari in the room. she kept begging to go home. the doctors kept frowning and whispering. i kept singing to her, rubbing her hand. and telling her favorite stories. finally the doctor stepped forward and told me that this was beyond what they could do here.. that we needed to be in omaha at a children's hospital. the life flight helicopter was ready. she needed ari to get on it. i called nate and said to hurry ... i couldn't ride the helicopter with little baby grayson and i needed to feed him... there just wasn't time. i helped strap ari in to the seat and onto the gurney. i sang her special bedtime song one last time, kissed her and watched her be rushed away down the hall onto her only chance.. without me.


i felt the full weight at that moment. i stayed in that hospital room all alone and nursed grayson.
my tears soaked his little face.


a friend got in my car with me to drive to omaha.. 3 long hours. not knowing what i would find when i got there. nate told me they hadn't allowed him to stay with her as they had emergency procedures to do... when i got there the doctor brought me back to orient me to all the machines, my sweet arianna was sedated.. intubated on a breathing machine... tubes and wires coming out of everywhere. as i tried to take in this sight and wrap my feeble mind around what was happening ari's numbers plummeted. nurses called for the crash cart and people were racing, scrambling, shouting, machines were beeping and screaming their alarms... i fell backwards and amazingly stumbled into a chair. head between my knees, deep breaths, fighting down the darkness that had welled up to swallow me.

ari was stabilized but the doctor warned this would not be the last time nor the darkest hour. she would be touch and go for three days. if she survived these next three days she would have a chance of walking out with us. standing there in that hallway the doctor with the red hair and kind eyes told me that ari had gotten here at the last moment.. that she was living minute to minute. that this hospital was the only place in the state that she even had a shot at making it... and we had barely made it in time.


through the night i stayed by her side.. i signed for blood transfusions, and gave expanded medical histories.
has she ever had this? no.
that? no
the other? no.
she's never had anything... this is the first sickness.


i tried to get to know the nurses and what the different machines were telling me. each one was in charge of a different part of my baby. i would stare at those numbers and watch them race up and drop low hour after hour. i journaled deep heart wrenching pleading prayers. i was so scared to touch ari or even whisper in her ear... her numbers danced so precariously i was afraid my voice or hand would make them teeter off the edge they were clinging to.


but we survived the night.. and the next day.. and the next three days.
this is a link to the blog nate kept during that time to keep people updated... arianna's journey

this all happened during holy week. the week before easter we were in the PICU hanging on a breath... knowing the closer we got to Easter the closer we were to hope. days passed into days and on good friday they brought her up from the sedation. she opened her eyes. i saw her sweet blue pools of love for the first time since i had sent her out the door on that gurney to the helicopter 7 days earlier. i held her. she was so fearful and traumatized she had to be on anti anxiety and mild sedation drugs. i whispered that it would be okay. she lay limp in my arms, hair matted, thirty five percent of her body weight melted into nothingness... and i whispered that it would be okay.
Good Friday three years ago... that was a good day.

slowly but surely we walked each day set before us. she had opened her eyes and yet she had not completely come back to us. in the back of my thoughts i started hearing the whispers of dread.

she won't be who you knew before. even if she lives... her smile will not survive.

she kept barely meeting the benchmarks the PICU had set for her. two days later on Easter morning they said it was time for her to graduate to the 5th floor. with a balloon tied around the post of her bed we wheeled her out of the crisis place..the floor that had parents and families huddled in the waiting room, people crying and sleeping on couches everywhere you looked.

in many ways it felt like the jaws of death had opened and we were wheeling her up into the light.

a resurrection from despair.

so when the dust settled the truth was difficult to hold.

medically, there was a 95% chance that she would not survive the severity of this battle. 

she had gotten strep throat as a secondary infection to the influenza.

apparently, there is a type of the streptococcus virus that randomly and without warning goes crazy in your body. instead of localizing in your throat, it spreads everywhere through your blood. with little to no warning it overwhelms your systems sending you into toxic shock, sepsis, septic shock and death.

fast.

we got to the hospital at the last minute on her last day, on the last stage with her last hope.

she battled pneumonia, infected fluid around her lungs, dependency and withdrawal from the anti anxiety medications. she had a PICC line (direct IV line to her heart) for 3 weeks and we had to administer round the clock intravenous antibiotics at home. then 6 weeks of oral antibiotics.

when all was said and done...

we found ourselves standing outside in that sliver of light we had seen from the bottom of our deep dark pit.

she came back.

all of her.

her beauty and wit. her humor and laughter. her intellect and spiritual heart.

it all came back....with a depth and wisdom beyond her years.

i think that little old soul spent her holy week cozied up in special communion with her creator.

easter speaks hope. easter tells the story of our last chance.

easter is the sliver of light in the bottom of my deep dark pit.

easter changed for me in a hospital room.

i've seen hope resurrected.

i've hung my hat on a miracle.

happy happy easter. :)