THANKFUL

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to write about how thankful I am for all of my blessings in my life right now. I will warn you this might get a little sappy, but after the experience we went trough last week, I feel like writing it all down is a good outlet for me at expressing what I am feeling right now.

It all started on Thanksgiving morning when I was giving Ella a bath. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that out of the blue she fell back and hit her head on the tub. I ran to pick her up, and noticed she was convulsing. I screamed like I never have before, and Matt came running and I called 911. Like out of a movie, I was crying and screaming to the lady on 911 that my child wasn't breathing and "where the hell is the ambulance!", while Matt was trying to get Ella to respond to something. The ambulance arrived and put her on the stretcher to take her to the hospital. They were thinking that she might have had a seizure, but weren't sure. I rode in the ambulance with her to the hospital, all the while hearing the response team in the back yelling, "stay with me Ella, honey stay with me." I was numb, and honestly thought my child was dying. We got to the hospital and they determined that she had had a seizure, and that it was probably because she had the flu and a fever. Well, about an hour after we got there, she had another one. I was on the phone with my mom in the hall, when I saw everybody running back into her room - I ran in and saw Matt crying like I have never seen. Fortunately, she got through it pretty quick, but determined that they needed to get some serious tests done and we would probably need to go down to Primary Children's to have them done. In the blur that was becoming of this day, we drove by ambulance to Primary's and waited in the ER to see their doctor. For some reason they were really busy that night, and we waited in the room for over an hour before the doctor came. She was finally awake and seemed to be doing really well. I was finally starting to calm down, when all of a sudden she started to have another seizure on the exam table. I completly lost it and ran out of the room screaming for the doctor to come in. Again, this one was very brief, but obviously something was going on with her, and they admitted us up to the Neurological Unit. We stayed there for a little over 24 hours, while they did every test, needle prick, poking and proding imaginable to my little girl.

Here is where I start with my thankful feelings (I promise there really are some). I am so thankful to this hospital for taking such good care of my baby, when I felt like I was totally drowning because I thought I was losing her. I am so thankful for my husband and that he worthily holds the priesthood so he could give our daughter a special blessing when she needed it most. I am so thankful for our amazing families for dropping everything and coming to be by our sides in our darkest moments. I am so thankful for my dad who also honors his priesthood, who gave me the most beautiful blessing I have heard, and to hear from his mouth that, "Melissa, I do know for certain that she will be alright." I am so thankful for the spirit. I am so thankful for my wonderful husband who literally picked me off of the hospital floor and held me when I didn't think I could handle any more. I know for certain that this experince has brought us closer together and has made me appreciate him more than I ever thought I could. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for blessing my little girl to be a fighter. She went through more torture than I could imagine, and is now doing a lot better. I know our prayers were heard and I know she will get through this.

She is now on medication for her seizures, and probably will be for quite a while. The medicine makes her really tired and ornery, so she is not quite herself right now. But all the doctors keep telling me that this is completly normal, and she should be back to herself within a week or two. As fresh as this still is in our life, I want to be able to remember how strongly I have felt the spirit and our Heavenly Father's love these past few days than I have ever felt in my life. I know how blessed I am and I know that the most important thing in this life is family.