Evangeline has enjoyed a good week. The regiment of respiratory therapies has enabled her to get stronger. She has begun to roll back and forth and even had a few moments of laughter earlier this week.  Check out the video below!! This was a heart-warming moment especially due to her recent struggles.  Her week has been otherwise uneventful.  We are so thankful to see her navigating some good road.  We pray that she will continue to improve.

On Friday morning  the topic of camping came up during breakfast conversation among the children.  When the older children were younger, our family had set out to go camping twice a year – once in the Spring and once in the Fall.  As you may imagine, life continued to get busier and camping fell by the wayside.  Since moving into our current home however, Mom has suggested occasionally that we could camp out in the backyard. 

Because of the breakfast conversation, the two youngest children (above Evangeline) were intrigued and really wanted to have the opportunity to experience camping since they had no previous memories of these events.  Word of the desire to camp in the backyard bubbled up to Dad shortly after breakfast.  He was still upstairs and had not been privy to the breakfast table conversation.  Of course, the children thought it would be a fabulous idea to do it immediately that evening.  Their logic was impeccable – the weather was going to be great and “we really want to!”

Dad knew that it would be a good idea but was reluctant to jump on board the train rapidly departing the station for camping in the backyard. Eventually, Dad gave in and helped lead the charge to make it happen!  Hot dogs, chips and ingredients for s’mores had to be purchased.  The tent had to be setup and arranged with the appropriate sleeping bags.  A fire had to be started. What Dad thought was going to be a challenging, time-consuming process worked out smoothly.  In the end, the family had a great adventure cooking out and camping in the backyard.  Mom, Dad, and all the children enjoyed the experience immensely!  (Mom, Evangeline, and one older brother slept inside.)

Over the weekend we realized that Evangeline had gradually been having more difficulty breathing. It seemed to follow finishing up the antibiotic on Wednesday. By Sunday morning she was laboring to breathe and at times oxygen didn’t seem to help as much as we would like. After consulting with our care team, we implemented a heavy regimen of respiratory therapies. The hope was to reverse the downward trend and help Evangeline improve her respiratory function. Mom immediately laid out an aggressive schedule to follow. By the end of the day on Sunday, Evangeline looked much better.

The last few nights, Evangeline has done much better at being able to sleep more comfortably. It is not unusual for her to wake up in the middle of the night, but in prior nights she had been restless and uncomfortable. Since beginning the aggressive respiratory therapies, she has maintained a very good oxygen level at night and even slept without oxygen last night.

It seems that Evangeline is improving at a slow pace. Mom has reminded us that it took Evangeline a month-plus to get better after her previous hospital stay.

The rest of the family is doing well. The younger children are enjoying being outside during the beautiful weather we have been experiencing. The older children keep plowing ahead towards finishing up the school year. We are thankful that Dad’s employment has been unaffected by the pandemic.

We appreciate several families from church blessing us with meals during our transition back to “normal” life with Mom and Evangeline at home. It certainly helps to ease the burden of food preparation. You know who you are – thank you!!

Please pray for Evangeline to continue to get stronger and for her respiratory function to improve. Thank you for your prayers! We pray that He would return the blessing back to you!!

Evangeline arrived home safely on Monday evening. Her oldest sister observed that she had a noticeable change in disposition at one point that evening. She seemed to relax upon realizing she was at home.

Evangeline did require a low level of oxygen the first night but has maintained satisfactory levels at night since then. We would like to see her be able to sleep more soundly during the night.

She continues to get stronger and is noticeably happier being at home. She is still having neurological events which we hope will improve as she gets stronger. We are also waiting to see exactly where her seizure activity settles on the new medicines.

We appreciate your continued prayers for her and our family!

Today was not the day we had hoped it would be. It started off promisingly with Evangeline being almost entirely weened off of oxygen. The doctors even considered sending her home today!

However, Evangeline spiked a fever out of the blue with no obvious cause. The first suspect was a urinary tract infection. The initial tests for that have come back negative. This threw a wrench into the plans because with no obvious reason for the fever the hospital is concerned that she may have the Coronavirus. Therefore, Evangeline and Mom have been re-quarantined late this afternoon. Mom must again wear all the protective gear to be around Eva. This evening we did receive the test results for respiratory illnesses other than Covid-19 – all negative. Hopefully the results of the re-test for Coronavirus will come back sometime tomorrow.

Evangeline is back on a higher level of oxygen and is generally uncomfortable. Mom is suspicous that this may all still be linked to a urinary tract infection. The lab will continue to grow the cultures and see if it eventually turns out to be confirmed.

Thank you for your continued prayers! Tonight, we would ask you to pray that Mom and Evangeline can get some rest. We sure would like to see Eva moving towards coming home again.