Thanks so much for visiting us during our journey, Matt, Andrea and Aerin!
Yes, we finally made it home. It's been quite a ride. Not just the travel, but the whole adventure. We will definitely, never, be the same. We are just now posting for the first time from home. We haven't yet had the time to even check our
e-mail. We arrived home Thursday evening ( thanks Mom and Tom). The flights went rather smoothly. Long, tiring, etc. but Aerin was a real trooper. She had started to be more congested during the flight, but still active and no fever. Once company started coming over on Friday she was really hamming it up and showing off. Still congested, but no fever. The clinic we usually use was closed for the Friday Veteran's Day holiday, so I decided we could wait until Monday for a doctor visit. Well, Friday night, Aerin's temperature spiked and we were awake every 30 minutes, coughing and wheezing. I was able to get her to another clinic on Saturday. They examined her and sent us to the emergency room for a chest x-ray. It turns out we had pneumonia in both lungs and a respiratory virus called RSV (usually affecting newborns or premature babies the most severely). The emergency room transferred her by ambulance to the hospital where she's been on antibiotics, IV's, and breathing treatments every 2 hours. They also discovered she is quite anemic. (Her diet in the orphanage may not have contained enough iron.) Well, this is why we haven't had time to post. They did release Aerin on Tuesday afternoon and she is doing much better, although we do have to continue breathing treatments and iron, and antibiotics. We won't know until later, whether she does have the asthma that was suspected in China. Matt and I have both also had a bout of the flu since being home. Luckily, we were affected on different days, and the other could be with Aerin in the hospital while the sickie could rest on the bathroom floor. Jet lag, stress, etc., our friends and family say, "Welcome to parenthood!" But we really feel that she is already so worth it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
