Knoxville is Sick, Very Sick

Wednesday Sadie and Savannah were up all night with a stomach bug and Thursday they continued to be unable to keep anything down. Wondering about their hydration, I called our doctor around 3 that afternoon and he asked me to take them directly to Children’s ER.

The waiting room at Children’s was packed with coughing, sniffling, vomiting, sleeping, and screaming children. Evidently it was better than yesterday and the day before. Knoxville has been sick! Wait times to see the doctors have been running around 2-5 hours. The flu took out nearly our entire church a few weeks ago, with only a representative or two from some of the families making it to services. Of course, I don’t know that first hand, our family was out sick.

After 6 hours in the ER, anti-vomiting medication, some Popsicles and Powerade, we were sent home and our girls are on their way to recovering. Yes, both were seriously dehydrated, but it is amazing how quickly the body can get back into balance if it is not continuing to loose nutrients.

There were a couple occurrences during our stay in the ER that made our time well worth it. Of course most importantly, I got to spend 6 hours snuggling and talking with just the two little girls; a rare event. Savannah can talk and it was fun to listen to her jabber about the current cartoon that was playing in the waiting room. The second was that when we got back to our private room, Cinderella was playing. Our two little girls are princess crazy remember? Yet, since we watch very little TV, they had never seen Cinderella. It was so much fun to watch them get excited about seeing the “real Cinderella” although they did wonder why she didn’t wear a princess dress for the whole movie.

The doctor prophesied that our whole family will share this and, if we are anything like the rest of Knoxville, it will last every bit of 10 days. We are praying that the girls will be selfish with this one and keep it to themselves.