Hello all, I am now home with Emma from the hospital.  As you saw from John’s updates, Emma came down with the flu.  I’m not exactly sure where she got it, but it could have even been in the Little Rock ICU last time we were there.  They are careful, but there are always a lot of germs floating around in a hospital.  Or John, Elise, or I could have brought the germs home to her.  She had just got her flu shot Wednesday, but becuase of the incubation time of the flu, she must have already had it at that point.  So her fever Wednesday night was due to that and not just the shots.  We actually tried to come home on Saturday, were discharged and drove home, but by the time I got home Emma was having another spell and bluish-grey tinged.  We ended up going back through the ER, but they admitted her directly into the same room we had and we waited until today to try to come home again.  Emma is still sick, but seems to be improving.  Whereas yesterday her breathing seemed quite labored, she is breathing much easier today.  She has a sore throat that is making her quite miserable though, so pray for that (and for me as I am very tired).  Usually the hospital is a good relaxing time for me, but this time, though I did relax a lot, I was up quite a bit in the night and trying to quiet Emma many times.  She is having trouble going to sleep and staying asleep.  She seems very uncomfortable quite a bit of the time.  It is hard to watch her go through this.  This is one thing I would gladly have done for her.  Because of her sore throat she is not sucking on her pacifier, so that may be one reason she is fighting sleep so much.

During our stay at the hospital we made two other discoveries concerning Emma’s health.  She had a lot of blood in her stomach on Thusday.  Whatever was bleeding seemed to stop by the next day, so they are not too worried about it.  But she may have an ulcer or possibly have torn something in her stomach due to retching.  I may discuss this more later.  Her reflux medicine also treats ulcers though, so I don’t know that they would do anything more for it.  Also I discovered a white patch on the bottom of Emma’s tongue.  The doctor suspects it is a thrush infection.  I was warned that one of her breathing medications can cause this, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise.  She has an oral medicine to swab her mouth out with 4 times a day for a couple weeks, so hopefully that will be taken care of.

Coming up next week Emma has her MRI, her hearing test, and will hopefully be meeting with a pediatrician in Rogers.  Pray for these things and also Emma’s complete recovery from the flu.