It's Only the 17th

We are 17 days into the new year.  Honestly, I waiver between feeling like it's been a blur and feeling like it's been one hundred days.  2013 has started out with a BANG.

The day after Christmas Makiah started having symptoms of what we thought was the stomach flu.  I treated it like that and kept an eye on fluid intake and such.  After 10 days of craziness with NO improvement I called the doctor.  They saw her and ran blood work and other such samplings.  Everything came back normal or negative.  No answers.  Maybe a sudden showing of lactose intolerance?  So we were told to ride it out some more and see if after several day of absolutely no dairy  she improved.  She did not.  So on January 7 this Mama could take no more and I called the pediatrician back and told them something was desperately wrong.  They got her an appointment with a specialist for Thursday the 10th.  On Tuesday January 8, she was in so much pain and having horrible symptoms, that I will spare you the details of, I called the doctor back and told them she needed to go the emergency room, they agreed and we did just that.  And they admitted her.  After tests the next day we were given a blow that was unexpected~ulcerative colitis.  My eleven year old was born with a disease that was laying dominant in her body for 11 years waiting to attack.  And attack it did.  Again, I will spare you the gory details, just know this disease is horrible, akin to Crohn's disease.  I truly felt like I had been sucker punched.  She is healthy, no problems, active and strong. . .we were stunned. The medicines were prescribed and our 7 day hospital stay commenced.  She is home now and still recovering from this initial flare of colitis and the gravity of it all is still being processed.  Special diets, four medications a day, blood draws weekly (until she is fully better) and knowing the effects of the disease and the side effects of the meds. . .it's dizzying.  I'm an adult and it's overwhelming for Makiah it is devastating.  Mostly because she is missing her first Bible quizzing tournament and the pain and the blood draws (she doesn't know all the horrible things that can go wrong if the disease isn't controlled).  She looked at me with tear-filled eyes and asked why.  What am I supposed to say?  Then she looked at me in a particularly painful moment and said, "I don't want colitis.  I hate this."  Silently, I screamed, "I don't want this for you either."  I told her we will work with the doctors, but more importantly we will wait on God and believe for healing.

So here we are.  Seventeen days into 2013.  Expecting a miracle for our girl.

Whew, maybe the rest of the year will be easy peasy?

I'm not holding my breath.

I'm holding to God's unchanging hand, 2013 could be quite a year.