The 4th of July

July 4^th.  As a kid this was THE holiday for my family.  My Dad loves the 4^th of July as much, or maybe more, than Christmas.  Year after year, you could always count on Dad’s bar-b-que chicken and Mom’s potato salad.  We would eat until we popped, take a nap, and then eat again.  You could also count on picking fresh veggies from the garden and shucking corn under that big oak tree in our yard.  And when we were young kids, Dad did a fireworks show for us.  Many of my fondest childhood memories are from the 4^th of July. 

But the 4^th of July changed meaning in 2015.  We were brand new parents and Lanie was only a couple weeks old.  She didn’t sleep too good that night or eat well that morning, but she was a newborn. Going to see my parents would be our first family outing since she was born.  I dressed her in her 4^th of July outfit that I’d found on a trip to New Orleans back in April, anticipating our visit to see my parents.  I’ll never forget on the ride down, she was quiet, and my husband and I talked about how we wanted to parent her as she grew older.  It is safe to say that at this time we still thought we were in control of life.  We discussed how we wanted her in actives and sports if that was what she showed interest in.  We talked about how we were going to make her help save for her first car, so she would learn ownership and responsibility, things neither of us really felt like we learned early in life.  It was a great conversation and we were making it despite our lack of sleep.

However, all that positivity was lost when we got to my parents’ house.  Lanie didn’t seem right and was lethargic.  We pulled her out of her car seat and she was burning up.  My Mom found her thermometer and we took her temp…. it was 102.7.  What?  This felt like it came out of nowhere.  We took her to the local small town hospital.  I can see myself now, walking into that hospital, holding a two-week old child out in my arms, crying.  I could hardly get out the words, “she has a high fever” when the nurse asked what was wrong.  I also remember this scene of our life like something out of a Lifetime movie.  It doesn’t truly feel real.

The hospital was great, but they knew there was nothing they could do.  Their best guess was that she had pneumonia.  When the chest x-ray came back fine, they knew it was serious and outside of their resources.  Lanie was given Tylenol to get the fever down and a round of antibiotics to maybe start addressing whatever was wrong, and then we were put in an ambulance and rushed to Children’s Hospital.  My husband and I were both allowed to ride, but I got to ride in the back with her.  It was clear she wasn’t doing well.  I remember the paramedic in the back with me tried to make small talk.  We talked about how kids are a hard part of his job.  He told me they prefer for children to be screaming, that way they knew the child was breathing.  Lanie wasn’t screaming.  She really wasn’t moving at all.  I kept watching the lines on the screen to reassure me she had a pulse.  In hindsight, he probably wished he hadn’t told me that.

Children’s did a great job, and not long after being there, Lanie came back to life a little and we had an answer.  Her spinal tap was positive for bacterial meningitis.  Even typing that out now, it is hard to believe.  I didn’t know much about meningitis and what I did know wasn’t good.  Lanie also began to seize while in the emergency room.  That was something neither my husband nor I had ever seen.  It wasn’t like what you usually see in the movies or on TV; no violent convulsions.  I remember asking my husband, “do you think something is wrong?”  “She kind of looks like she is swimming.”  It got the attention of the medical staff, and before we knew it we were standing outside the OR looking in where our 18 and 1/2 inch baby laid surrounded by more medical personnel than the table would allow.  She was intubated and when stable, she was taken to a PICU room.       

I kind of wonder if God was sitting with the person assigning rooms that night.  He would know how much we loved the 4^th of July.  We were assigned a corner room overlooking the minor league baseball team’s field.  And that night, while we stood at the crib side of our daughter fighting for her life, we watched fireworks.  It was almost comforting; something normal for our day.

Now, three years later, the 4^th of July brings so many emotions.  There is sadness as this is the day that our lives changed in ways we could never imagine at the time, and there is pain remembering how close we came to losing her.  But I also see this day as Lanie’s second birthday.  She was prayed for by so many people, and she survived.  Her life looks a lot different than it did going into that first 4^th of July.  Our conversations about her have changed to things about her special needs school, her therapy, and her doctor appointments.  I seem to still be able to find happiness on the 4^th of July now, although it is a different kind than it used to be.  Lanie has made us change, mostly for the better.  And she has brought us a happiness only people who have known and loved someone with special needs will ever know.  She is pure love in the truest sense of the meaning.  We have all grown as people over the last three years, and we are better because of her. 

So today, we will take that trek with Lanie down to see my parents again.  We will eat my Dad’s bar-b-que chicken and my Mom’s potato salad.  And tonight we will shoot fireworks with my husband's parents, thank God for our independence, thank God that we live in a country with access to good medical care, and embrace this next year of her life with optimism. 

Parenting tip: Alway keep a thermometer in your diaper bag.