Aiming for progress, not perfection.

"...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."
Philippians 1:6

Sunday, June 01, 2008

"eye of the tiger."

so we'd previously determined that ellie is quite sensitive to bug bites when some time ago she got one on her shin that was hot, hard and very swollen for several days. she scratched the crap out of it and still has tiny scabs and what will likely be a scar. i have pretty impressive reactions to most bug bites, especially ant bites, so we weren't altogether surprised or all that worried.

we were not, however, prepared for this:


this is what my precious, beautiful child looked like this evening at about 8 p.m. AFTER two hours in the emergency room that included a shot of epinephrine and a shot of decadron. when we went to the emergency room, her eye was twice this big, twice this swollen and twice this terrible. neither landon nor i could look at her long without wanting to cry.

after much contemplation, we figured that she must have been attacked by mosquitoes last night while watering the plants with delana. she has a pretty intense bite on her left wrist (see picture below) that kylah can remember seeing last night before we left their house. she also has several on each of her legs. i never noticed any of them until this morning when i got her up for church. her eye was swollen then, but not anywhere near this bad. i took her to church, we watched her and we gave her benadryl. everything seemed to be OK so we came home and put her down for a nap. she woke up about 4 p.m. looking like rocky after his worst fight. i immediately took her to the living room and told landon we were going to the er. he didn't argue. his mouth was actually agape for quite some time. it was a terrible sight.

she didn't act upset all day, before, during (excluding having her eye poked at and needles jammed into her legs) or after the er experience. she just played and blabbed and laughed as usual. it was really quite amazing, as a matter of fact.

her eye started opening up pretty quick after the shots. like i said, these photos are about an hour after we got home from the hospital. we ate dinner, played for awhile and then took a long, playful bath before i laid her down. that was about 9:15.

i'm trying to decide whether or not i should go in her room and see if i can catch a massive, horrible swarm of bugs that only comes out to attack my baby when i'm not there.

talk about heartbreaking.

"it's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight/
risin' up to the challenge of our rival/
and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night/
and he's watchin' us all with the eye of the tiger."

8 comments:

Meems said...

poor baby girl.

no_iffer said...

That is awful! I can't even believe that. You poor things. i would have cried like a baby!

ree said...

OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!
Poor baby!!!
I'm glad she's doing better.

Missy said...

poor baby. I hope those bumps go away quickly!

Madelyn said...

bless her heart!

same thing happens to my kids and ME (3 times last summer - on my eye - yeah cute.) little suckers get us during the night, too. now we all sleep with mosquito nets over our beds. yes, sad and very south americaesque, but very helpful. fyi, they have cute ones at target (or they did last year)you could hang from the ceiling and clip closed around her crib and then take it down in the colder months.

hope she feels better soon.

marme said...

grama (mamo) feels lots better now

beautiful chaos said...

that is just awful!
Why is it that the freakiest stuff has to happen to the little ones who can't tell you what's wrong?
I am glad she's doing better.

holly said...

oh my gosh!! this is just like alex. thank you so much for posting on my blog. what has your pediatrician said? are you using insect repellant? how is she doing now???

it's going to be a loooong summer.