The Dreaded Phone Call

We were totally caught off guard by the phone call at 6:00 am on Sunday morning. Andy answered it and I thought it was probably someone from church needing something. How wrong I was. It was a call no one likes to receive: Christy was in an ambulance with little A rushing to CHOP. He was having difficulty breathing and had a terrible cough.

Andy and I went to church but stayed only long enough to make sure things were covered, then rushed over to CHOP to offer our support to Christy. Christian joined us soon after we got there. It was so pathetic to see the little guy hooked up to an IV and oxygen tube in that big sterile bed. He was in ICU at CHOP - a good place to be if a little one is very sick. It was determined that he had an upper respiratory viral infection with a bad cough. What made this so serious is that he is still so young. The older kids had the cough earlier and were able to get over it, but it just got worse and worse for him. Christy had had him to the doctor earlier in the week. A chest x-ray had confirmed that he didn't have pneumonia. A viral infection just has to run its course, antibiotics don't work on viruses. The nurse was hopeful, though. She said he was a healthy, chubby baby with good skin color, shiny hair and eyes and was obviously well taken care of. It still clutches at your heart to see such a little one suffer, though. His coughing fits were so distressing to watch.
We stayed with Christy and Christian and little A all afternoon. Christy was pretty tired because she hadn't slept at all the night before. I spoke to her several times today and she got good sleep last night and felt better. She said A was finally eating, too, and even smiled today. So he must be making some progress.

Andy and I went to work today, and boy did we work. There is so much going on right now and I didn't know if I'd get it all done today. And I think everything that could go wrong, did. The Pitney Bowes postal meter isn't working. I had a lot of mail to stamp and the machine kept giving me error messages. Two weeks ago, I had called Pitney Bowes to order a new part for the machine and it still had not arrived. I took time out of my busy-ness today to call them to ask where the part was, had it in fact been shipped, could they tell me when I would get it. I was put on hold several times, other phone lines were ringing in the meantime... The bottom line: I think they never did order the part, but they said in a heavy accent (out sourced?) that they would expedite the order and I should have it in 2 days. We'll see. Then on top of that, the copier/printer gave an error message and everyone in the office was stuck. No one could print. So I had to call for a repair man to come out to see to that. Who knows when they'll come. In the meantime, our IT guy happened to stop in the office today, so Andy asked him if he thought he could fix the copier. He started taking it apart, didn't know what to do, so I got the idea to call a Ricoh service man who had given me his cell phone number once when he was in. He was very helpful and I hope he gets a raise, because the IT guy was able to fix the copier just by talking to the Ricoh service man on the phone. Yeah!

So I'm finally leaving the office, getting in my car, and someone drives into the parking lot who needs a ticket to the Women of Faith seminar this weekend. I have all the tickets in the office, so I had to get out of my car, go back into the office and take care of her.

There was one point during the day when I went into the bathroom and just stood there for a couple of minutes enjoying the quiet. It was that kind of day.

When I got home, I made my orzo pasta salad and a Caesar's salad. I had marinated chicken this morning, so Andy put that on the grill. I also cut the applesauce bread and had a great dinner. We ate it on the deck, inviting the Andersons to join us on their last night with us. They have been living in our upstairs apartment for the last year, but they are going back to Jamaica early in the morning. He has been a pastoral intern at our church and we've enjoyed having him here. We'll miss them.