Emailing Jonathan

Children’s has a medium set up for patients to receive email messages from friends and loved ones. Anything you send will be hand-delivered to Jonathan. Click here if you’d like to send him a message directly. He is a great reader, and loves to get mail of any variety. Thanks, Everyone!

Jonathan’s hospital stay

First, we appreciate everyone’s thoughts, prayers, offers of help, and other expressions of love that have poured in over the past couple days.

Jonathan and I arrived at Children’s Medical Center yesterday afternoon and were treated to the least tortuous, least degrading, easiest admittance process I have ever experienced (and I’ve experienced about 20 of them). Interestingly, the gentleman signing us in was apparently in training for Mr. Universe or something, and his biceps were probably bigger than my thighs. But I digress.

Jonathan was doing very well, particularly given he was running a 103 degree fever. Once we were settled in a room (and a nice room at that, think LDR), we had a nice long consultation with our hospitalist. She was pleasant and competent, traits shared with pretty much everyone at Children’s. She then ordered a battery of tests, and Jonathan made me proud as he kept his composure while they poked, prodded, measured, x-rayed, and bled him through the evening. Along the way he enjoyed a dinner of french toast and bacon, cried after spilling his hot chocolate (and not from the hot liquid all over himself, but because he was enjoying it), took in a view of Pete’s Dragon, and generally did very well. Tricia dropped by late in the evening for a nice visit that coincided with the administration of the antibiotic via the IV installed earlier, and then Jonathan settled in for some sleep. I settled in for “sleep”, as I was on this couch-bed thing that was roughly equal to a balance beam surrounded by some squishy couch material.

The night went reasonably well, though there were some rough patches as Jonathan broke his fever. This morning he had no fever, which was fantastic, but didn’t last. The hospitalist came by again, with the surprising report that the x-ray hadn’t really shown any pneumonia. So next up was a CAT scan and then a rousing game of Battleship, followed by the return of the fever and some lunch.

So we have test results drifting in, but no real resolution yet. The hospital stay has been very pleasant, but we would like to be home. And I suppose that’s a good thing.

What’s Up Around Here

Last night saw very little sleep for most of us as Jonathan relapsed with high fever, and Josiah fought a very nasty tummy bug, which he continues to fight today.

This morning after seeing Jonathan our pediatrician made the decision to hospitalize him, because he did not like the direction the pneumonia was taking. Jonathan is now checked in, and they are running a series of tests to rule out anything worse, in order to determine proper course of treatment. He is under the care of a very competent and compassionate doctor, and we are thankful for the attentive care he will receive, though we miss him terribly at home.

For his part, Jonathan was quite nervous about the prospect of hospitalization, so prayers for his little heart to be calm, and for his little body to heal are all very appreciated.

We are thankful for our sweet Grammy, who has come to be of help. Her presence has cheered us, and the house is a fresher, cleaner, more delightful place to be since her arrival.

I will try to post updates here as we have them.

Passing Notes

This was written in very big letters, and handed to me earlier this morning while I was in the midst of a phone conversation. We have tried to teach our children not to interrupt us unless it is an emergency, but I guess they assumed a written message was a good way to get around that rule:

“Jo has a Stinky!!!”

and then in tiny little letters at the bottom of the note:

“(pe yu)”.

I wear my sunglasses at night

The latest from Nicolas, this one on the long range weather forecast.

Nicolas: Dad, guess what.

Jay: What’s that?

Nicolas: The other week (note: that means “next week” in Nicolas-speak), it’s going to be sunny the whole week. The whole week. Even at night, it’s going to be sunny.