Thanksgiving had special meaning for Rebeca and me this year. At the beginning of November our two-year old David was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, which is a rare condition which causes swelling of the blood vessels, fever, rash, and achy/swollen joints, among other things. It is never fun to see someone you love suffering, but it is especially hard when it is a small child who is normally so full of life and energy. Thankfully we were in the US. We saw the hand of the Lord caring for us in so many ways. His fever started the day after we flew in from the Dominican Republic. If David had already had a fever when we flew in, we might have had an interesting time at JFK - one of the airports in the middle of the Ebola scare. The first day of his fever we were with one of our good friends who is an experienced pediatrician. He examined him then and found no reason for alarm as David only had common flu symptoms at that point. But more importantly we were on the radar of our de-facto pediatrician in the US, who was the one who first diagnosed this as Kawasaki.
We are very thankful that we were not in the DR when this happened. One of the common viruses affecting people here right now is Chikungunya, which causes fever, joint pain, and rash like Kawasaki, yet Chikungunya is mostly just uncomfortable. You just ride it out and treat the symptoms. That approach with Kawasaki can be fatal.
We are also thankful that my parents live only a few minutes from a world-class children's hospital, thankful for family and friends around us while David was there, and most of all, thankful to see him bounce back quickly after treatment. Seeing him healthy, energetic, and enthusiastically exploring his world has made us realize just how sick he was and the difference has really made us appreciate more the life of our beautiful son. This has also made us more sensitive to those around us who are suffering.
We think that David is out of the woods, but the statistic that Kawasaki is still fatal to 0.17% of kids who receive treatment is not comforting. We continue to pray that his six-week echo cardiogram will be clean and that the necessary aspirin regimen until then will not open the door to Reye's syndrome. And we try to appreciate every day we have with our beloved, fun-loving son. There are moments with two-year-olds that are difficult to hold on to that attitude, but most of the time we live in thankfulness for the life of David and thankfulness for the hand of God in this process.
