Our Wild Weekend of Horror

At 10 PM on Sunday night Brent and I finished a movie and headed upstairs to bed. We heard Brooklynn awake in her room, so I went in to check on her because she'd been feeling pretty sick for two days. The minute I picked her up I knew something was terribly wrong - her head was on fire and her body limp. She kept her eyes shut as I lay her down to check her temperature, rolling her head around as she moaned.
The thermometer read 105.8
I yelled to Brent to get a cold wash rag and immediately started stripping the clothes off her body. We rushed her outside into the car and up to the ER as I called the doctor on call from my cell phone. When we got to the hospital I stood in line, anxiously looking at the room FULL of sick kids, wondering how long our wait would be.
"How may I help you" the receptionist looked at me from her desk.
I quickly described our problem. "a hundred and what?!" she quickly stood up from her desk and motioned us to come back to be seen immediately.
Within minutes they had IV's pumping into our little baby's body, with monitor patches all over her chest and alarms beeping away. They later told me that their chart that converts from Fahrenheit to Celsius for fevers did not even go up as high as she was registering.
We got to the hospital at 10:15 PM, and spent a total of 6 hours taking and waiting for tests in the ER. Brooklynn wasn't old enough to understand what was happening, but she learned quickly that she didn't like the people wearing the color green. She started saying her first version of "no", every time they entered the room she would look at Brent and I, and say over and over "Na Na Na", shaking her head. When that didn't work she started waving "bye bye" to all the nurses and doctors when they entered the room, I'm sure wishing they would take the hint. She cuddled her blankee, eyes red, as they kept running tests.
It broke my heart to hold her as they pushed tubes down her nose and needles into her arms over and over for blood tests. They did X-Rays and Urinary tract catheters, swabbing this and swabbing that.
It was the longest night of our lives.
At 5 AM, after virtually no sleep and a stressful night of "what if's" they decided to admit us because her white blood cell count was abnormal and they wanted to keep her for observation. After filling out more forms, Brent left us to go home, and I shut off the blazing white hospital lights in our new room. It was 6 AM, our baby had been awake longer than she has ever been awake, and through all those hours endured a lot of painful experimentation. She held onto me like a scared little monkey, wrapping her arms around my chest and through her tubes, holding on tight.
I lay down on the hard cot provided for me in the room, and sang her lullaby after lullaby. Brooklynn and I slept on and off for the next 4 hours, often waking up to her whimpering or to one of the machines erupting in beeps, followed by nurses coming in to check her vitals. As she lay there on my chest hour after hour, I loved her more than I ever had before. That night, within just a few minutes, every other detail in my life melted away and my whole world become my little girl. Instantly I had perspective on what matters - nothing could have come between me and my baby. I lay there and thought of God's love, and how he must feel watching us go through the crappy parts of life.
When I wasn't sleeping I watched the numbers on the monitor above us, her heart beat coloring the screen. Her first tests showed her heart rate at 221. Normal baby hearts pump at 120. It was horrifying to watch, heart-breaking to go through, and so exhausting overall.
The next morning she sat up, crying and moaning and looking at her paw all wrapped up in tape so she couldn't pull off the IV again, looked at me with those big eyes and said in the softest voice "Dada." I called Brent and he came up immediately to hold his little girl close.
Yesterday they let us go, on the condition that we live close by and that we could get back quickly if anything went wrong. Brent and I pleaded with them to let us out because we were confined to 1 room. When Brooklynn was on meds she was going CRAZY wanting to run around, which the tubes didn't let her do (she succeeded in pulling out one IV - blood everywhere - and they had to re-do it), and when she wasn't on meds she was miserable, throwing her body around without consolation.
I knew going home would mean her own toys, her own bed, and less people in green (although all the hospital staff were so helpful).
This morning Brooklynn's temperature is 100.9 without meds. She seems to be feeling slightly better - she won't eat, but she will drink. Her face is bloated due to the fluids in her body, and she's a bit more unstable than usual on her feet.
Every test that we took came back negative, meaning she doesn't have the Swine Flu, or 6 other viruses they tested for, nothing in her chest cavity, nothing in her urinary tract, nothing in her sinuses, or in her blood. We actually don't have a clue what is wrong with her - she had no other symptoms other than the fever and lack of appetite.
We go in for more tests this afternoon, but our hope is it's a virus they didn't check for and that it goes away in the next few days.
I can't believe the out poring of love we have seen. Cami met us when we got home Sunday with a gourmet hot meal that could have been made in heaven. We've been sent emails and phone calls of concern, my dad showed up like a silent angel Sunday morning in our room and gave Brooklynn another blessing as she slept.
I am grateful for experiences like this. With all of the horrific detail that you pass through, there is a sweetness that comes that you don't get elsewhere. A sweetness of family and how they are always the first there, and the most to care. A sweetness of friends who stay up late worrying and bring by popsicles and cookies for a 13 month girl who has lost her appetite. A sweetness of motherhood when you're the one she pulls to when she's crying "momma momma". A sweetness in your marriage as you hold the hand of the only other person who you know actually feels what you are feeling and that moment that you look at each other and just know, that you're in it together. A sweetness in your relationship with God, as you pass through an understanding, a slice of the depth of emotion He feel towards all of His children.