Please Pray for Keziah Selam

We arrived home at Raleigh Durham Airport on Wednesday to a wonderful reception of over 25 friends and family members. It felt so great to be home. We were exhausted from the long trip; not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Our lives will never ever be the same for what we experienced in Ethiopia. God has truly blessed us for allowing us to go there. The kids were real troupers on the plane ride and although tired, seemed to relish all the attention. Josiah Abel was a little overwhelmed at first but got into the swing of things after awhile. We had meant to post when we first got home but knew that we were pretty wiped out. On Thursday, I got up with the kids and started to get things going because Eileen was in bed with an excruciating headache. It was an interesting morning to say the least. I made myself some Ethiopian coffee and I knew that despite all the chaos, it was going to be a good day. My friend Don stopped by and we visited for awhile. We went through the day with a lot of activity because neighbors and friends stopped by bearing gifts and congratulations. Our friends the Moores brought us a delicious dinner. About Midday Eileen felt better and she came downstairs to join in on all the fun. By the time she came downstairs the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. The kids were all doing great.

But sometime in the afternoon, Keziah had a fever and we gave her some Motrin. It seemed to help but later the right side of her face and neck became swollen and tender to the touch. We called the doctor to get his advice. He suggested we take her to to the ER to get her checked out. We left the house for WakeMed at 10 pm. The doctors and staff at WakeMed are always wonderful. They took great care of our Keziah and felt terrible when they had to put an IV in her little arm. The nurse felt especially terrible when it took her a couple of tries to finally get it going. They drew blood for testing and even gave her a CT Scan. At 2 a.m. they decided that given some of the unknowns about her possible exposure to diseases, they decided to admit her. They had found that she had some type of infection, but were unsure just what it was. Her fever had come back and was 102.4 at one point. They gave her motrin and it helped reduce the fever for a while, but it kept coming back. They gave her an antibiotic through her IV. The doctors seemed to think that they would be able to isolate the cause and she would be home today.

I left Eileen and Keziah at the hospital because we had a scheduled appointment for the other kids with our pediatrician at 10 am. When I arrived home Josiah had been downstairs looking for me. Randy, who along with Melissa, was staying at our house, had just finished feeding Keren, when he found him in my office. Poor little guy..
I took him upstairs and crawled into his bed with him.

At 8:30 we were all up again, getting ready for the doctor appointment. It was pretty amazing. Grandma and Melissa helped with breakfast, I had my Ethiopian coffee and off we went. Four kids in carseats, Ellie, Melissa and me. The doctor was supposed to see Keren and Josiah, but also got to examine Ellie, who was getting over a sore throat, Jimmy, who has had a cold for a few days, and Jeremiah, who just started one. By the time we were done I felt like the guy in the Mr. Mom song. It was sensory overload. Thank God Melissa was there to capture all the info the doctor was telling us.

I called Eileen after that and learned Kez was not going to be released until at least tomorrow (Saturday). They still had more tests to run. Maybe I am getting cynical, but I can't help getting the impression that our little Kezzie makes for interesting training for some of these young interns who rarely get to see a patient two days after entering this country from a third world country such as Ethiopia.

Anyway, I am very thankful for the pediatric staff at WakeMed. Over the years with our other children, they have bent over backwards for us.

We'll hopefully post more tomorrow, but please keep Keziah in your prayers. Pray that God will give the doctors wisdom to find exactly what is wrong and to treat it properly. She is a precious little smiling angel, and we all want her home.

Jerry