Happy Easter?

Whew...our Easter was crazy.

Addi has had a rash on her legs for a few days. She has sentsitive skin, so certain soaps and lotions make her break out, so we geve her some benadryl and figured it would go away. Well, she woke up at midnight Saturday night crying saying she couldn't walk. She is very dramatic, so I didn't worry too much about it until I looked at her ankles, or where they should have been. Her feet and ankles were so swollen, I couldn't even see the ankle bone. I totally freaked out and worried and paced until Chris and I decided that I should take her to the ER. We said a prayer, Chris gave her a blessing and she fell back to sleep so we decided to wait until the morning. When we woke up, she said she felt much better but she was still limping, her rash was way worse and her feet were very swollen. So I called our doctor and he said that there isn't a good reason for a child's feet to be swollen so not only did we need to take her to the ER, we needed to go to the Vanderbilt ER. (That's the big fat children's hospital in the area.) So we dropped Mason at our awesome neighbor's house and went to the hospital.

We expected a big wait, but they took us right back when we got there. The doctor and 2 nurses met us in the room. They checked her out and decided to run some labs. The dr said he thought she had "HSP" and was going to start an IV. Ok, I was totally freaked out then. Addi is petrified of IV's and I thought it had to be pretty serious for them to start an IV in a 5 yr old. The nurses were amazing and explained everything to her. She was very brave and didn't cry at all. She barely even flinched. After the tests, the doctors decided that the diagnosis of HSP was correct. It is an inflamation of the blood vessels. It's probably a virus that she got from having a weakened immune system from having strep throat a few weeks ago. It can be serious and cause a bowel obstruction or kidney issues. But luckily she didn't have any of those complications. Most of the doctors and nurses there hadn't seen HSP before so everyone kept coming into her room to take a look. One of the doctors even took pictures to document it for teaching purposes. Addi thought it was awesome all the attention she got and she even got to control the remote in her room (which she never gets to at home because of Mason.) They told us just to watch her and follow up with her doctor later this week. Vanderbilt is such an awesome hospital, if a hospital experience can be labeled as good, ours certainly was.

We did manage to color easter eggs, have a small indoor egg hunt and get some fun easter baskets too. We were bummed out not to go to church on Easter Sunday, but we are grateful that our little princess is doing better. And for the wonderful

family we have.