Another Health Update

I'm blogging from hospital today. Our son was admitted last night because the antibiotics weren't working fast enough on the swelling near his ear and his pain was increasing. He's here until Monday and if his symptoms have improved by then he'll be discharged. The diagnosis, I think, is cellulitis, with a dose of otitis externa (commonly known as swimmer's ear). But the progress of this has been a little unusual, so we're just waiting in hospital to see how the intravenous antibiotics work.

I'm feeling pretty tired. We left home at 3.30pm yesterday to just go to the doctor and ended up in hospital, not returning home until after 9pm. It took a while to calm down, get on top of what needed to be done to finish off yesterday and prepare for a few days of sitting with a 10 y.o. boy in hospital. I do get to return to my own bed at night, which is both good and bad, the good being at least I get a fairly good sleep.

Plus, I'm operating out of my comfort zone and at a higher level of Japanese. I'm working hard to understand as much of what's going on as possible and that's exhausting. Thankfully David was able to manage the extensive paperwork last night and the admitting doctor spoke excellent English.

But the upside of this is that we have older kids. Last time we did this was nine years ago (with the same boy), but we had three boys under eight then. It was a lot harder. Yesterday the older two managed at home without our help for several hours. Heating up left-overs for dinner, adding to that some freshly cooked vegetables, doing homework (most of it, procrastination resulted in one still finishing off an assignment at 11pm), and having showers. I was impressed and relieved. It takes a big burden off us to know that they can manage on their own if they need to.

It's also a lot easier to keep a 10 y.o. entertained in a hospital bed. Phew!

Additional to that we have a great network of people who are positioned close enough to help if we need it. We're not isolated like many missionaries are. And a long time ago we learnt to value of asking people to pray when we're in difficulties like this. Knowing there's a whole bunch of people lifting our needs up to the Lord is of incalculable comfort. Of course social networking is a great help (that wasn't around, or I wasn't using last time we had children in hospital in 2003 and 2006).

Then I had a special friend call me from Australia using the Facebook app. How does that even work? But it's great. It was fantastic to catch up briefly in the midst of this craziness, even if I wished it were over coffee and face-to-face.

So, all in all, we're going okay. Tired and a bit stressed, but managing. And praying in the midst of it all that my throat problem will just go away because I've got way too many other things to be getting on with (after starting to get up to speed on the magazine this week I've come to a screeching halt again). But then I hear this small, quiet voice assuring me, "It's okay, you're not what you do. I love you anyway. And right now you're looking after your child and that's okay."