Back from the dead

I feel like I am "back from the dead" :). We had a great quick trip in the Dominican Republic. I wanted to bring 3 or 4 of my nephews home with us, but it is not that easy. The day after we got home I checked and I was indeed pregnant as I had suspected. Then a few days later I started to have high fevers - up to 103.3, along with other weird symptoms like severe eye pain, back pain, tingling tongue, headaches etc. My mom took the kids and fed us most days which really helped. Then on Wednesday night I went to the ER because the palms of my hands and bottoms of my feet were bright red and burning and itching as if fire ants were eating me alive. After drawing a lot of blood and phone calls to the center for disease control, the doctors were excited to announce that I had Dengue Fever. This is a tropical disease from mosquitos. These doctors had not seen a live case in the US before and thought that it was pretty exciting. The bad news for me was that there is no treatment. They gave me benadryl, steroids, IVs and Vicadin but nothing helped the pain or the red reaction. It is a nasty disease that does not respond to anything and the pain was so extreme that my body was shaking. The good news is that I am immune for life to that strand of Dengue, but there are 3 other strands and if I get one of those it will likely be more severe and include internal bleeding. My fever is now gone and so is most of my itching, however, I am extremely weak and Thursday night I started to miscarry the baby. I know that that is for the best because there is no way that my womb was a healthy place for that little baby. I was concerned the whole time. What a rollercoaster of emotions in one week!

I am thankful that I was in the US with my family's help and the comforts of home when all of the fevers started and I am so thankful that Joanna did not get sick at all. She was such a trooper and everyone in the DR just loved her!