Calm before the Storm....

I had an extremely low key week. I kept thinking I needed to take it as a sign of things to come…but not wanting to be pessimistic, I chose not to.

Monday I was so lazy that I didn’t even do my usual Monday laundry and cleaning. I just lounged around and was plain lazy. We had swimming lessons that night, and my silly kids found some swimming caps and that made for lots of giggles and for some funny pictures. Gavin even fell asleep with it on….priceless!:




Tuesday the laziness continued and we had a very low key play date with my neighbor and friend Candace. The 2 of us kept it all together for 2 hours with 7 kids under 9 years old. We had Hallie, Gavin, Gavin’s friend Alec, Kayler-Candace’s kids Jhett, sweet baby Lyndin, and Candace was babysitting for her sister Briana so we had cute little Kaiden.: I was so lazy I didn’t even get any pictures….so I stole some off of Candace’s blog. The kids did the slip and slide and played in the kiddie pool. Then my kids played nicely that afternoon while I got my cleaning and chores done:




Wednesday was my day to get back to work at my job cleaning houses. My mom watched Hallie and Kayler and Gavin went to friends. I finished around lunchtime and we relaxed until G.J. got home from work. Then I took off to a bread making class at my friend Emily Clark’s house. I learned a lot, and I think it will really benefit my family and maybe some of my lucky family and friends if I choose to share! I had a HUGE grocery list, and I came home exhausted after the day’s events only to find that my mother in law had came to take Hallie and Gavin home for a sleepover.

Thursday I woke to the phone ringing. Did I forget to mention that my kids have slept in until 8 or 8:30 EVERY morning this summer…it has been beyond Heavenly. So, when it rang at 8:15 I was a tad bugged…hehe. It was my mother in law Telling…not Asking….me that she was taking Kayler for the day. So that left me Kid-less for the day. At first I was nervous. I can hardly handle all 3 kids some days, so I was nervous for her. She doesn’t get to very often, so I just decided to let her. Then I was a little excited. A WHOLE day all by myself!!! What’s a girl to do! I again had that nagging pessimistic feeling that this was the calm before the storm….but I tried to push it aside.

So, since it was my day to cook for dinner group, I quickly got that cooked and delivered. Then I made some of my newly acquired skill of homemade bread. Then I had a heavenly shower all by myself with no distractions. I actually got dressed in real clothes and did my hair AND makeup. I took some bread and jam to my friend Mandy’s work and we had a nice long chat and I relaxed more than I had in a VERY long time. It just felt so good. Then I came home and ironed, watched TV, rested. Then the phone call came.

My mother in law called saying that Hallie couldn’t walk and that she was very very sick. It was about time for G.J. to pick her up so I just called Dr. Pollary and got her an appointment. Now let me back track about 10-15 days ago….

While we were camping we were around tons of rodents…you name it-mice, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks=eww. Along with that there were lots of flies, mosquitoes, ticks=double eww. I kept my kids clean, sprayed them with bug spray, etc.

Fast forward to the 5th of July. My kids and G.J. were up at the Basin (a place by G.J.’s parent’s ranch) when Hallie came down with a high fever. She came home, had some Tylenol, and the next day seemed fine. 2 days later we did swimming lessons, and that night she had really bad leg aches, which I attributed to the swimming. She was fine the next day. Over the course of the next several days it was a cycle of fevers/chills, leg aches/body aches, sleeping a lot, nausea/diarrhea, just not feeling well. What really threw me off was that she would get better for a day or two. Along with that, the rest of the family was perfectly healthy and had NONE of those symptoms.

On Tuesday after our little playdate I noticed she didn’t look so well, but I attributed it to being in the sun all morning…and pushed it aside. She was perfectly fine Wednesday so I was ok with her staying the night at her grandmas. When I got the call from my mother in law I instantly knew something was horribly wrong.

I took her to the Dr. and on her exam she had a fever of 101, her thyroid was double in size, she couldn’t walk, could hardly talk, had lymph nodes swollen all over her body, but mainly in her legs, and was one sick little girl. He threw around several things that could be wrong, but he asked me immediately if we had been camping around 10 days ago….well yes, we had. Then he asked if there were rodents and bugs…well yes, there were (Duh…isn’t there always rodents and bugs when you are camping?) He told me of a disease called Tularemia and told me these are the symptoms:

• sudden fever
• chills
• headaches
• diarrhea
• muscle aches
• joint pain
• dry cough
• progressive weakness
• swollen and painful lymph glands

Suddenly everything fell into place and it was clear that is what she must have. Apparently rodents are infected somehow. The rodents are then bitten by bugs. The bugs then bite sweet little girls like mine. It is only spread by these little varmints, so it is not contagious human to human...but it is amazing that nobody else in my family or that we were camping with got it. I tried VERY hard not to cry in front of the Dr. when all I wanted to do was scream and rant and rave, and maybe throw myself on the floor and hit the Dr. since he is always bringing me bad news.: (brace yourself…I am not going to censor)

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKIN’KIDDING ME! This is NOT funny to me…I am so sick and tired of my family getting slammed with the damndest things. The weirdest ailments. We have gone to hell and back with our 3 kids. We have spent thousands of dollars keeping our family alive and well. Why does the lord keep doing this to me…why am I so stupid that I can’t learn whatever is supposed to be taught.….why, why, why! Why can’t we just be NORMAL!”

But, I didn’t scream that….I didn’t cry…Because I didn’t have to. Luckily I know the Dr. well enough, and he knows me that he just had to look at me and he got teary, and so did I and we both knew without saying anything what was felt.

So….he sent her for blood work, put her on an antibiotic, because THANK GOODNES this awful disease is very treatable with strong antibiotics and sent us on our way.

She is taking Aleve for her horrible pain in her legs. They don’t normally do that for kids but the Tylenol and Motrin wasn’t touching it. After one dose of that and the first dose of the antibiotic she was a whole new girl. We won’t know for 5-7 days if the Tularemia test was for sure positive, but he said that based on her symptoms alone he is quite sure that is what it is, and that sometimes the test won’t come back positive until you test her blood 2 weeks later. We have to do blood work in 2 weeks anyways to see why her thyroid was so enlarged so we will double check.

She is doing great now. Besides her legs not feeling too well and being a little tired she is her happy normal self. I just feel so guilty for not responding sooner. I was just so confused by the bizarre symptoms and that she would get better for a day or two in between. I think the lord gave me a low key week to prepare. After Hallie got sick Kayler started acting naughty-which is nothing new…but still, Gavin’s stomach acted up, I got some sort of flu bug, and things were just less than pleasant at our house…and this was all in a 24 hour period! Luckily G.J. came home early from work to rescue me!

Today is Saturday. G.J. is working on a jungle of weeds on our property. I have just been trying to get our life back to normal. I am reminded yet again that although this trial is big to me, my kids really are healthy. They hardly ever catch the common things going around like flus or colds...and for that I am grateful. I think I am going to try to make it to the temple today since we missed ward temple night last night in the midst of the craziness.

I am trying to prepare myself for any backlash that will (hopefully not though) come if her tularemia test results do come back positive….because I guess the CDC (center for disease control) is supposed to be notified as well as other local authorities that the rodents in this area are infected.

I had never heard of this crazy disease but when I told my Grandpa that she had it he immediately started crying. I guess back in the day they called it Rabbit fever and he lost several family members and friends to it. It just makes me grateful for modern medicine and that she was cured so quickly!

So there you have it….One week of summer that isn’t on the top of my favorite list!