Our Hospital Ordeal and Praise to the Great Physician for a healthy baby boy...

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for quite some time now, I just keep putting it off because there’s just SO much to say I know I’ll just end up rambling and get frustrated…last Saturday when we were at a friend’s house for dinner, baby Qiao Qiao’s breathing got really really strained…he had been coughing for a few days before that but nothing too serious, but this, was serious…we got very nervous and the two families gathered in the living room laying hands on Qiao Qiao and beseeching our Heavenly Father to touch the precious baby and heal him...after a powerful time of prayer, we decided to take him to the emergency room…we left our friend’s house at about 8:30 in the evening and went straight to the closest pediatric hospital where we saw a physician who gave us a 2 minute examination and a diagnosis of “pneumonia/bronchitis” and we were told that he needed IV antibiotics but there were no empty beds in that hospital, so we (now my mother, our good friend Eva, myself and baby QQ) got back in the car and drove to another hospital…at this hospital we were told the same thing, no beds, and were sent away again…at the third hospital they wanted to take the baby away from us and put him in a room where we would only be allowed to even LOOK at him once for 5 minutes every THREE days…and, as you can imagine, we said HECK no! so, we piled back into the car, frantic, carrying a baby who was barely breathing and got back into awful Saturday night Chengdu traffic…at this point I remember thinking to myself that this must be very much like what Mary the mother of Jesus was feeling like when she was about to give birth to the King of Kings and NO one would offer her a bed…at that point it would have been like “oh come on!! My water just broke and you don’t have a SOFA or SOMETHING??” for us it was “come on, this baby is about to suffocate out in the winter air and you people call yourselves a hospital when you’re totally unprepared to handle FLU season??” anyways…finally, at the fourth hospital, a doctor was kind enough to call another hospital and ask if they had any empty beds BEFORE sending us back out into the cold…he found us an empty bed so we went to this tiny little pediatric hospital in a busy, central part of town…when we got there the hospital was SO quiet, there was very little staff on duty (it was, after all, MIDNIGHT at that point) and the doctor who examined Qiao Qiao almost bit my head off because I woke her up accidentally knocking on the door of her office…FINALLY, at half past midnight, we were given a bed, in a private room (insert: PRAISE JESUS!!!) with a private western toilet (and again I say HALLELUJAH!) and the poor baby boy began his far-too-long-for-21^st-century-medical-practices treatment… at that point mom left to go get necessities for the baby like FOOD , diapers, blankets, etc etc, and Eva and I settled in for a LONG night…we passed the time in praying, praising Jesus for every little blessing of the evening that we could name, and encouraging each other, staying awake and alert as nurses came in and out of the room for hours…I want to thank Eva for staying that night with me in the hospital, without her sunshiny outlook and encouragement and prayers I wouldn’t have been in as good a state of mind as I was! Qiao Qiao’s treatment went on for one whole week, 7 days, from 9 in the morning till 8 at night they pumped antibiotics into his tiny body…one main frustration was trying to get an IV into a baby on whom it’s nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find a vein through his thick, scaly skin…The doctors and nurses were unbelievably helpful and kind throughout our entire stay and mom and I both agreed that any future medical problems we have with children will be taken directly there! One funny thing, to pass the LONG hours spent in the tiny, cold hospital room, I devised a game…my mother and I named the doctors and nurses of “our” little hospital after Grey’s Anatomy characters…don’t judge…it was quite comical, especially when the short bald older man with nose hairs was dubbed “McSteamy” and the charming, chubby, young doctor with HUGE glasses took on the role of “McDreamy”…and then there was ”George”…oh “George”…the sweetest man, he was a doctor’s aide (I’m guessing that’s a legitimate title, that’s what he’s known as in China anyways)…he was SO kind and compassionate towards Qiao Qiao, making numerous inquiries about how he came to be with our family and how we care for his skin…on our third or fourth day there he brought Qiao Qiao a tiny stuffed panda, SO cute! I was actually able to share just a tiny bit of “why we do what we do” with “George”, I told him “wo men you zhe zhong xing, gei zhe xie hai zi wo men de ai, shi yin wei wo men xiang xing shang di, shang di xian ai wo men, suo yi wo men xiang ba zhe ge ai chuan gei bie en” Translation: We have this heart, to love these children, the reason is that we believe in God. God first loved us so we want to show that love to other people.” His response was very positive and I remarked to my mother that MAYBE, just maybe, God put us through the terrible ordeal of Saturday night because at this tiny remote hospital there was a young doctor whose heart was ready for seeds to be planted…and if so, it would be SO worth it…

Anyways, after all that, Qiao Qiao is now doing just fine! He did have pneumonia and maybe a touch of bronchitis (that got a bit lost in translation), but he’s completely back to normal now! Praise our Heavenly Father, the Great Physician, and thank you to all of you who were lifting up the little guy in prayer!