I hate feeling helpless. In all areas of my life. And though I can honestly say that I embrace the feeling of helplessness a lot more than I used to…

… I still hate it.

The two worst kinds of helplessness (in my opinion) is in natural disasters and watching your children suffer. Combine the two… and I’m not sure I would survive any of that mentally or emotionally. I fortunately haven’t had to ever endure the double whammy and pray hard that I won’t ever have to… but this week, I watched one of my children suffer.

Chance started with a dry cough two Wednesdays ago, the day before school started. The cough hasn’t gone away, but it wasn’t paired with congestion or fever… so we just watched him. The cough got worse. More frequent. Still no pairings but it kept him (and the rest of the house) up at night. Other than being exhausted during the day, he still seemed “fine”… till last Thursday.

He had the school call for us to pick him up from school. He had a low grade fever (99.6*… honestly, I think everyone runs hotter here in El Paso) and so we did. That afternoon, he seemed fine. He even tried to weasel his way into playing games and watching movies. I gently told him, “If you come home from school sick, there are no games, no toys and no movies. All you get to do is nap and read.” That made him want to go back to school.

But then, the next day, he was still in bed asleep at 7:45am. This is rare for our kids. They’re usually up at 5:30am, praising Jesus and such (not really). I just called in sick for him. At certain points in the day, Chance would cough so hard and for such long periods of time, he would turn completely red & purple. I tried not to show panic, but I knew he couldn’t breathe.

His birthday party was on Saturday. I thought about canceling it, but again, by afternoon, he seemed fine.

Saturday came and went… all seemed well. Other than being a bit tired and slow, Chance seemed normal. But then on Sunday… OH SUNDAY… the boy basically slept all day. And when he woke up from his nap, he had a small rash on his left cheek. After dinner, it spread to under his chin, and by bedtime, it was all the way to his right cheek as well.

I panicked.

I took pictures and texted them to my friend, Anne, who also happens to be the NP at Chance’s Ped’s office. She said not to panic (yeah… right!) and to come in first thing in the morning.

8:30am rolls around and Chance and I are the FIRST ONES in that office. What’s interesting was when Chance woke up in the morning, his face was completely clear. We had nothing to show Anne there… but she did discover that Chance couldn’t take a deep breath without coughing and had an ear infection.

Chance’s very first ear infection.

Well… he got his first swimmers ear earlier this summer… but it’s not quite the same thing.

Thank God for Medicaid for the boys because Anne could prescribe the exact medications Chance needed to kill this virus without any extra cost to us. We came home with a nebulizer and meds for his ear infection and cough. Well… sort of. He went down for his nap first before taking any of that and woke up like THIS:

No itch. Not warm to the touch. No raised bumps. He didn’t even know he looked like this till I showed him this picture.

Before you ask, no I didn’t change detergent, lotions, or anything else that would cause this. And within the hour, the rash disappeared… again.

Always after his nap. The only thing I could think of was he must have brought an allergen home and shared it with his bed so I took all his bedding and sleep loveys and tossed them in the wash. On HOT.

I honestly think it’s allergies. I had really horrible asthma AND eczema as a kid and  ”outgrew” it (even though I still get it if I hang out with cats too long) so Chance could very well be experiencing the negative sides of my gene pool.

All this to say… I feel HELPLESS. I’m doing my best for my little boy… but his little body just has to fight the rest off.

So, I’m asking you… in my helplessness… please help me. Pray for Chance. Pray for me. Pray for all of us.

To end it on an upper… Chance looks, feels and acts a LOT better since starting his meds today. Here’s the video we took from tonight:

I’m hoping with all his clean bedding, he’ll wake up good as new. I’ll keep you updated.

Thank you in advance for intercessing on our behalf!