Crisis

Family emergencies have a way of "making or breaking" everyone. In the past week, I would suggest that we have done a bit of both.. story goes like this...

Entire family was sequentially sick with some sort of stomach bug.. causing diarhea and vomiting.. it was bad but really not all that uncommon for a family of our size..so we didn't think so much of it.

When Tracee got the bug it was right before my trip so we figured it was okay.. been here, done this.. was what we thought. I went ahead and left... Unknown to us, was the fact that Tracee's blood sugar levels had been in a dangerous range for months hampering her at every turn.. When the "bug" hit.. Tracee quickly deteriorated into dehydration, and became dangerously lethargic.. once again our collective collossal ignorance played out and the thinking was that this will pass.. we just did too much this past weekend and need to rest. Tracee's penchant for demonstrating her "supermomness" causes problems in situations like this, but luckily Tara came to the rescue..

Tracee tries to go the dr only to find that the entire practice is in Louisiana for hurricane relief... sooooo, Tracee goes to patient first.. they immediately send her to the hospital..
and the "KNOWN" part of the crisis begins.

Tara leaves me one of those chilling voicemails... our neighbors swung into action with the prillaman 4 kids... and Tara took Tracee along with her 3 children to the hospital emergency room, where Tracee was immediately diagnosed in serious to critical condition... I pick up the voicemail, call Tracee and rush back to Richmond. Upon my arrival, Tracee is basically non-responsive and barely awake in the emergency bed, but she is receiving fluids, and being monitored. Kids are at Cindy's, and Tara is still at the hospital with her 3 kids.. She agrees to go back to the house and to stay the night with the kids, since I need to stay with Tracee..

Tracee is diagnosed with Diabetic Ketoacidosis and admitted.. no thanks to the general poor attention and care of the ER doctor. I wanted to put the guy through a wall, but for more on that you need to talk to me..

The complication here is that Tracee presented like a Type 1 diabetic but she was actually a Type II in crisis. Tracee's sugar levels took 4 days to even think of stabilizing, and all the while the "bug" is still wrecking her system. She didn't eat at all for over a week, and the dehydration was very difficult to handle due to her inability to hold down any foods or the fluids..

put this into perspective.. in only 4 weeks, we estimate Tracee lost about 30 pounds.. trust me, this is not the way to do it.

Tara stayed with the kids for 2 nights.. she was probably the glue that kept things at least manageable in those early hours along with our neighbors Cindy and Pam.. I shudder to think what I would have done without them.. Thank you Lord for putting these people into my life. Tracee's mother and sister came down from NJ to help through the weekend, and while that was stressful in its own right, it was nice to have them here.. Her mother will be staying for a couple of weeks and that is a huge help..

Jump to yesterday... We finally got the sugar levels to come under 200 and she was discharged..BTW.. the correct range should be 80-120...

Tracee is insulin dependant requiring testing 3 times a day and injections 4 times a day, but we are learning to deal with it... In a week or two we should know what teh baseline is and how to adjust for diet and activity.. This is very complex and very dangerous..

Pray for us...Tracee is weak and recovering from the hospital, but she is coming back quickly.. I have a lot more to write about.. with this, but it will take some time... moral of the story.. People are all that matter... building community is the key to a solid foundation.. All the stuff in teh world is insignificant... it can all be replaced. People and relationships cannot.

Many have asked us how we are... the answer.. we are not dead.. we are alive, so it is time to start acting like it...everyone has problems and hurdles...the game is to simply deal with them and push on...