Our Heavy Heart and Six Little Sickies

A couple of weeks ago, we had a whole slew of bad news and the children all (six) got very sick.  It started on our trip, when we got the news that Brian's grandmother had died.  On the trip we also got word that a dear friend of ours here in Germany that we've known for ten years had tumors in his brain and was having surgery soon.

The last day of the trip, I mentioned that Drew got sick and threw up all the way home.  Poor guy!  This is not the first trip that he was puking all the way home.  It also happened coming back from Nevers, but most of the sickness then had happened over the night before and not as much in the van as this time.  The next day his tummy felt better, but he developed painful sores in his mouth.  Then a few days later Judah got them, followed by Bobby, then Hannah, then Genna, and Isaac was the last to fall on his birthday.  Fortunately, the big kids had an easy go of it.  The youngest three though had sores for about three or four days before they could eat anything solid.  They were all so hungry, but it hurt so much to eat.  I was fixing them food or smoothies all day long.  They went through fifteen popcycles and four packages of jello in 24 hours.  Not to mention all of the ice cream and shakes, which was just what the doctor ordered when he confirmed what I suspected, that it was Hand Foot and Mouth disease.  Bob's well check had already been scheduled for the Monday after we got back and Bob woke up feeling feverish and wouldn't eat.  So the doctor had a chance to look at his mouth and even found the spots on his hands and feet that I had missed.  My poor, sweet Bobby had the hardest time.  He'd just scream a high pitched scream about every ten minutes and say his mouth hurt, while trying to rip it off.  He was hoarse by the end of the week because there wasn't much you could do to help him save ibuprofen and Tylenol.  He didn't enjoy the popcycles as much because it hurt to stick his tongue out far enough to lick them.

To make matters worse, Brian got it too and very badly.  He had to go to the funeral feeling awful.  Then his cousin died too.  And one final (God-willing!) piece of bad news was that I discovered that Judah has a hernia.

Whew!  It was a rough week and a half.  Our hearts are heavy for our friends and family, but we carry on with the peace that surpasses all understanding.