Isabella's Own Chaos Pt. 2

I have already written about how it has always been a fantasy for Leo to plan a trip, arrange childcare and sweep me off my feet to an exotic vacation spot. Poor guy has tried a few times and it never ends in the fantasy I have dreamed of. When Belle was three, Leo surprised me with a cruise that we were going to take at the end of summer. A week and a half before we were supposed to leave, Isabella woke up in the middle of the night throwing up with a high fever. I went to pick her up and she screamed in pain. Off to the ER we went (not with Leo's blessing of course) and this time I made them test her urine before they did a spinal tap and sure enough, she had one of the worst kidney infections they had seen in a long time. She was admitted and they could not get her fever-free long enough to release her. There was only one doctor from our practice that made rounds at the hospital and guess which one it was? The Jerk. He wouldn't let her stay in the hospital until she broke the fever. He told me (again) that the hospital wasn't a place for kids to stay when their parents didn't know how to take care of them and I was perfectly capable of giving her meds through the IV and that the insurance companies shouldn't have to pay for my fears. I don't have to tell you how much I loathe this man. Her first day home, her fever broke. If he would have just waited one more day, she wouldn't have had to come home with an IV and we wouldn't have missed the cruise. Hate, hate, hate him.

We switched urologists to a more aggressive one out of Lutheran General and I remember at the appointment, the doctor asked me if I was planning on having more kids. I asked him why and he said because this condition was a genetic. I answered, "Then, I guess not. We are done." My mental state took another hit as I wondered what the hell was wrong with my genes that I couldn't make a healthy child? I had three kids and they all had medical issues. Not small ones but big, life-threatening, organ damaging ones. In my mind, the medical community had their hands on all of them. The difference and silver lining was that Isabella's problem could be fixed. She ended up having surgery to correct the reflux. She was in the hospital for three or four days and now has the same kind of scar I do having delivered her by c-section. When we left, the doctor gave me a big packet of the things I needed to do differently and I remember feeling very overwhelmed with all of the needs of my three children (people remind me all the time that it could be worse and that there are worse things to have than CF or urinary reflux and I know that. It does not escape me that there are kids worse off and my heart goes out to them but I can honestly say those words and reminders serve no purpose other than making me feel like crap for feeling overwhelmed). I tried to do most of them but now the only thing I do is make sure she changes out of a wet bathing suit right away. She has been fine, thank God. It's pretty sad that when she was going through it all, at the tender age of three, she knew enough then to be proud of the fact that she had something, too. She was happy about the very thing that broke my heart.

Leo and I didn't talk about having more kids for a year after that. We never prevented it but for just one year and the first time since we had gotten married (except when we were already pregnant), we weren't trying to get pregnant. That didn't last long since the desire for having another baby wouldn't go away. For me, CF, the urinary reflux and the infertility didn't make me want another baby any less. It just made me sadder that having to deal with all of them together made it nearly impossible.