The Homeschool Mother's Journal - 4

In my life this week...
I never finished last week's journal entry, so I guess I should catch up on two weeks. (I'm tempted to just skip over a week, but it all sort of fits together.)

Two weeks ago, Lauren spiked a fever on Wednesday. The peds clinic didn't see anything wrong. I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of a fever without a cause. I talked to her transplant team on Thursday, and they checked her out from top to bottom. All the x-rays, labs, cultures, etc. came back clear, and she hadn't run a fever since Wednesday afternoon.

On Sunday Lauren ran a fever again and that night she was up a lot during the night complaining that her ear hurt. On Monday afternoon, I took her to the peds clinic. The pediatrician saw a raging ear infection. One of the transplant cardiologists and a nurse practitioner came down from their clinic and agreed that it was probably just the ear infection causing her ear ache. She got an antibiotic shot in the office, and we left with a prescription for more antibiotics. Unfortunately, she looked sicker shortly after we got home. She was breathing really fast so I took her back to the ER. After waiting in the ER for most of the night, Lauren was eventually admitted to the CVICU with pneumonia. She perked up after a day or two of IV antibiotics, and on Friday she looked good enough for us to come home.

Needless to say, I'm hoping for a little peace and quiet this week.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...
Nowhere. Nobody. Seriously. The transplant team basically grounded Lauren for pulling her little pneumonia trick. She's not allowed to go to therapy, to church, or anywhere else for the next two weeks. I'll probably take the big kids to the library one afternoon and just wait in the car with Lauren. Otherwise, we'll all be entertaining ourselves at home.

My favorite thing this week was hearing what a great job Addison and Brennan did helping out around the house while I was at the hospital with Lauren. I'm so proud of them!


Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...
This morning I realized that Addison is getting dangerously close to high school. I was thinking about ideas for next year and figured out that we need to at least start thinking about high school classes before we finalize our eighth grade plans. Am I ready for this?

A photo to share...
The other day I pulled an old Usborne book off the shelf and threw it in my tote bag as I ran out the door to an appointment. It was 1001 Things to Find on the Farm. Lauren and I had spent many hours hunting and counting our way through the book. I might need some of the others from that series.