My Son's Been Sick

Today we got home from the hospital. We were planning on staying one more day but a baby with a respiratory problem came to stay in our room, so we thought we didn't want to pick up something new. The nurses also recommended we go on home a day earlier than their previous recommendation.

I've lost track of the days, so I forget what things happened when. However, I think it was Thursday that Caedmon had no fever for the first time. We were really thankful for that. Even though his fever got better, his stomach got worse. On Thursday he began to have severe diarrhea. That very quickly caused him to have a very painful diaper rash. In order to avoid worsening his diaper rash we had him go without a diaper, with just a cloth wrapped around him. This method helped his diaper rash, but as you can imagine, we got pooped on a few times. Every time he pooped, it was a real chore to get him cleaned up--especially since we couldn't use wet wipes on his tender skin--and he pooped a lot. He still has diarrhea pretty bad, but we are giving him some medicines for that. His diaper rash is not as painful now as it was on Thursday.

On Friday night we were getting settled down to go to bed when there was a commotion out in the hallway. We heard an adult man shouting and weeping. There were lots of doctors and nurses working in the treatment room and lots of people gathered in the hallway. The noise died down. Then after an hour or more a man came into our room carrying a 14-or-so-year-old boy on his back, and he set the boy down on the bed by the window (there were three beds in the room). The boy was on drip injections the whole night while his mother watched him. It turns out that the boy had drank pesticide. He apparently wasn't happy about something. By morning he seemed to have some energy and was walking around and even smiling. As time went on he looked very bored, just looking around the room and examining restaurant delivery service menus. I really wanted to be a help to him, but it seemed impossible for me since my Chinese is not good. So to give him something to do, when I went home to get some things, I brought back one of the Narnia books in Chinese and a booklet. When I gave the book and booklet to them, I explained what they were a little bit. The family seemed really happy that somebody had given them a gift.

Last night there was another late night commotion. This time there were people shouting and crying in our room and in the hallway outside the room. The baby in our room this time had different troubles from my son, so we went out and walked up and down the hallway, wondering if we were going to go without sleep again. Then a nurse had sympathy on us and opened a room in a different area, where we could be alone and sleep in peace. I felt really guilty about this. I felt as if I had taken advantage of my status as a foreigner to get a special privilege. We felt safer though since there were no sick babies in the room.

Today for the first time my son started coughing pretty bad. I'm afraid he caught something. Also, I feel sick now.

So now we are back at home, hoping we can stay home.

My wife missed about four classes and didn't prepare any lesson plans for later because she was in the hospital with the baby. I missed one class. Now, I'm preparing my lesson plans for tomorrow so that I don't have to make up any more classes. That way I can watch the baby while my wife makes up her classes. We will not have to do it all on our own though; my mother-in-law is here now, and there are a whole host of very helpful friends living here in the same apartment building with us who will probably help us watch the boy while we make up our classes.

I'm thankful that we were given strength for all of the time in the hospital. We were happy and had energy for most of the time in the hospital, but when we got home, my wife was suddenly exhausted and I was suddenly really irritable.

Anyway, having my son get sick was not pleasant, but thank God for his truth. It was an encouragement somehow to meditate on the fact that disease is the result of the fall of man. That this trial was not the arbitrary action of a pantheistic deity or the careless work of the "first cause." Rather the trouble of sickness entered into the world through the mutiny of man. This mutiny plunged the whole world into trouble, the very trouble which God is carefully healing by working in the souls of men.