Ears and Tears

Melanie —  October 18, 2008

Hannah’s had an earache since Tuesday, also with flu-like symptoms.  We finally got her started on antibiotics today.  We’ve been giving her painkillers every four hours for 5 days now, poor thing.  This afternoon, Mariah started complaining about her ear too.  And tonight Aliyah started crying and saying her head and throat hurt.  Peter and I have both been feeling like we’re coming down with something too.  Joel just cried out a few minutes ago, so hopefully he’s not coming down with it too.  Pray for healing for us and that we will handle the situation with grace and patience.  Peter left tonight for Sri Lanka so I am on my own – pray for energy.  And pray for him not to get the virus.
Despite the illness, today’s been a really great day actually.  The children have been so sweet and funny and loving to each other.  Aliyah made Hannah a get-well card and voluntarily swept the floor for me and did the dishes.  Mariah spent ages this morning listening to music and stories on cds.  Peter commented that she’s becoming like a little juke-box, seemingly obsessed with changing cds!  She came upstairs and showed me a cd cover of Umberto Tozzi and said, “May I ask if he’s English?”  🙂  Hannah spent a long time snuggled in our bed, reading to Joel, finding all the pictures of “orseys” (horses).  They are such sweet children and I am so thankful for them.

Now for the “tears” part of this post.  Get ready.  A friend very kindly gave each of the girls a special plant this summer.  Hannah’s was a sweet pepper plant, or so we thought.  It yielded 6 tiny orange peppers.  I almost put them in the soup I made tonight.  Good thing I didn’t.  I put one pepper at each of our places at the dinner table.  Don’t ask me why, but I suggested we all take a bite of our pepper together.  We raised them and toasted, “to health!” and then all took a bite.  Well, Hannah, Aliyah and I did.  The others were a little hesitant (spot the non-vegetable lovers in our family!).  Those of us that took bites immediately spit out the pepper and grasped for our water.  Aliyah’s whole face turned bright red and tears started coming out of our mouths.  Ohhhhh, I guess they were HOT peppers!  We all laughed and laughed, especially at how red Aliyah had gone and the shocked look on everyone’s faces.  Hannah commented later that it was the best family dinner we’d had in a long time!

I realize I haven’t posted for a long time and I’ll try not to make this too long . . . but on the headache front, things are still not so good.  I have been very discouraged about how frequently I am still getting the migraines.  We are currently still exploring different ways to deal with the situation.  (Long story of course)  In the past few days, I have found what I highly suspect may be a huge underlying cause.  It would be so great if there WAS an underlying cause (it’s probably a combo of several) so I am hoping – again, that this may be it.  Would you please pray for me, for wisdom to know how to proceed from here, which treatment to choose, etc..  I will share more specifics soon when we can do some more research, see a doctor, and choose a course of action.

Since I have been writing this post, Joely-boy has woken up crying so it seems he has probably joined the rest of the family in being ill.