When we brought Connor home he cried all night long. Nothing consoled him. Finally I had the idea of putting this heavy blanket we had on him and immediately he went right to sleep. That was his routine, the heavy blanket every night and classical music (don’t worry it wasn’t too heavy for him).
The next day we noticed his IV puncture was swelling. We took him in and well he had a staff infection from the hospital in the spot from where his IV was in. He was prescribed antibiotics and started clearing up.
After that though, everyday he sounded congested and he had a hard time breathing through his nose. He always sounded junky. So I asked his doctor thinking, surely this cannot be normal. His doctor told me it was because his system was getting used to toxins and other things in the environment. I had never heard of that before and no one else’s baby was going through the same thing unless they were sick.
Then the doctor went on this rant about members of my church and putting babies in the nursery at church. He said don’t put your new baby in there keep him away. And I said, sir they don’t go in there until they are 18 months old. And he looked at me like, oh.
Connor continued to get worse and was sick all the time. We were in and out of the doctor’s office. In the meantime our insurance changed which meant we had to change doctors.
At the new doctors office they immediately found out he was allergic to milk (ordered tests), but it still didn’t explain everything. (I was breastfeeding and eating cereal, yeah even though I am allergic to milk).
Connor was going to the doctor every week and on several different medicines a month. The bills were piling up and all our money was going to medical bills. We were paying $650 per pay check (Paid weekly) for insurance, plus $300 or more on prescriptions and $25 co-pay every time Connor went to the doctor.
Finally on one visit Connor’s doctor said he could not be in daycare. I told him I was watch kids in my home and he said I needed to stop. This was hard because there went more of our income. On top of that Spencer lost his second job and couldn’t find another. (Was laid off)
So I had a really sick kid, lost my income and Spencer lost half of his. So we were down to just his paycheck and medical bills that kept piling up. And were denied any government aid. Which was really hard because we had friends that made more than us but easily qualified for help.
Spencer decided he needed to go back to school. So he chose to be a Certified Nursing Assistant to get his foot in the door somewhere. So he borrowed against his 401k to go back to school($1000).
Of course school takes time and then there is taking state boards and waiting for results (before everything was done electronically 😂) and then there was looking for a job.
We had reached out for help but was denied and was told it was because we mismanaged our funds. Of course none of that was true. We didn’t even have any outward indication of that. We didn’t have nice cars. Just one car that was it. Living in an inexpensive apartment in downtown Mesa. I never went clothes shopping or any kind of shopping for myself or any of us. We barely could get necessities, even then sometimes we didn’t get that. It was a loss of income and increasing medical bills every month.
It was fine looking back. We made it through and it helped me rely on the Lord more and faith.
No one still could make of Connor and what was wrong with him. They finally decided on tubes for his ears just so they could drain the infection off his ears. He was now deaf because of ear infections. When they did tests, he didn’t have any hearing waves what’s so ever.
To Be Continued…
Adventures in Carrolling 