Things were improving... slowly, but at least improving. We decided to have a physical therapist come to the house a couple times a week. It was really good to have someone come and actually show him what to do to engage a muscle group, or at least give assignments for him to work on. His physical rehab at this point had been set back dramatically! After three weeks with little movement, he was really tight. He also had something to focus on, and it made him happy to start feeling productive, but to also see some improvement.
The girl that came to work with him was about his age and had little kids like we do. One day as she was leaving, I was in the other room, but I could hear Drew (the two-year-old) yelling "Bye Grandma! Bye Grandma!" I was glad I didn't have to deal with the embarrassment of trying to explain that one! Jared said he tried to ignore it, but she could clearly hear him, so he basically just said they have the same hair-do!
Brynlee's baptism day was quickly approaching, and we didn't know whether it was going to get pushed back or not. She was so excited that we didn't want to if we didn't have to. To give a quick explanation, in our church, we don't get baptized until we're 8-years-old. We feel this is an age of accountability, where a person now knows between right and wrong, and can make the decision for themself whether or not to be baptized.
We also believe that the baptism has to be given by someone with the proper authority, or the Priesthood. Jared holds the Priesthood, so Brynlee was so excited for her big day where she could get baptized by her dad! The baptism was scheduled for the 4th of February, but Jared still had his PICC line, and the doctor kept delaying the removal "just to be safe." So we were thrilled to find out a few days before the baptism date that the PICC line would be removed, and that he would be ready to baptize her!
It was a crazy day. Jace had a basketball game early that morning, and we had to prepare for the big day and having family and friends over. Jared took Jace to his game so I could prepare for everything else. Brynlee's baptism went well, and afterward we had a big group over to our house. By mid-afternoon, many people had left, but most of my family was still there to socialize. Jared started complaining that he was having a seizure. I thought he was joking at first. Luckily my sister is a nurse, so she knew what to do much more than I did! He didn't ever pass out, but his right side was violently shaking. After about a minute, it went away, but then a few minutes later, he had another one.
We had a nurse coming to the house once a week to take his labs (this was to monitor whether the infection was going away or not). All of his labs had come back okay a couple days earlier, but he hadn't had a very recent MRI, so we didn't know if this was possibly infection returning, or worse... We decided he needed to go to the ER, especially having two in a row. I was glad to have family over - it made the job of lining up a babysitter much easier! We made the drive back to University Hospital (it was a long drive, but they had all of his medical history and information). They took some more labs and all of them came back okay. They didn't want to do another MRI because they didn't want to "over-radiate" if not absolutely necessary. So after a few hours in the ER, we came back home with few answers.
I think Brynlee was disappointed and felt like her day was ruined, but she was concerned. And Jared felt horrible because he had ruined her big day! He was worried that the kids were going to start to resent him.
This particular incident made it very real to me that our lives, at any given moment, could be turned upside-down. But we were very grateful that the labs looked okay.
