SIbling rivalry of the wrong kind

So the day Wes turned 9 months old, we were admitted to the children's hospital. Apparently not content to let Quinn be the only one to give us grey hair, Wes took his turn staying at the Hasbro hospital inn.

Wes contracted E coli from some food that we were never able to determine.

The E coli effected his system so much that it inflamed his kidneys so they started to shred his red blood cells, which then clogged his kidneys and shut them down.

He ended up with Hemolytic-uremic syndrome. So with Kidneys completely shut down, he ended up on Dialysis. They kept telling us we were really lucky though. The timing of us bringing him to the hospital was perfect, thanks Dan .

Not so soon that they didn't catch what was going on, but not so late that he was in really bad shape. His kidneys were still functioning when we were admitted to the hospital on Wed. however they shut down shortly there after.

By Thursday evening they were talking about surgery to place a catheter in his abdomen to start Peritoneal dialysis .

By Friday they were praying they could wait until Monday to do the surgery so the dialysis equipment they ordered for him (catheter and dialysis solution) had time to come in. Saturday Wes went into surgery. Luckily/sadly, Wes pretty much slept from the time we were admitted to the hospital until a little over a week. It really was a blessing as he wasn't able to eat anything and his body was retaining a lot of fluid.

People lovingly volunteer their time and talents during the week.

Things were going really well for about a week (M-F), when unfortunately the catheter they were running the Dialysis through slipped out of place. They replaced the catheter and had to wait a couple of days to start using it. In that time, Wes gained about 7lbs of water weight. The poor thing was so swollen and bloated he couldn't open his eyes. You can see it a little bit below, however he is probably down 3 lbs for the worst of the swelling.

After a couple more days on dialysis things started to turn around. I was just laying in bed with him one morning when he finally opened his eyes. He was staring at me and I was just talking to him and singing and making faces when he smiled. It was so out of nowhere, thank goodness I had my camera right there. I was just soo excited to see his eyes open, I had missed him soo much, that I was taking pictures of him just being awake. When he smiled at me I got so giddy. Any way, the above picture is the first time he smiled or was even really awake in almost 2 weeks.

It was all up hill from there. So they started the Dialysis again on Sunday, by Tuesday he was peeing, and then on Wednesday they removed the catheter. Friday in the AM hours we went to the recovery floor and then we went home on Monday the 10th, almost 3 weeks later. Thank goodness, I was starting to get really nervous about how I was going to make all of this work once Dan started his outage. He started on 12 hour days 6 days a week the day after we got home!! Perfect timing Wes.

I have to thank everyone, especially Dan's and my parents, for all of the prayers, help, and support given during this time. Wes, lets not have a repeat of this!!!

So here's our time on the recovery floor.

The day we went home!!