Derek goes to the hospital

After some pretty serious symptoms associated with a bad flare-up of Derek's U.C. we headed to the hospital on April 28th. Derek was in the hospital for a week while they pumped him full of pain meds, anti-biotics and steroids.

Rainie and Gary were so sweet to come visit Derek, especially since they were also dealing with Rainie's mother having to go to the hospital and Jamey and Travis getting ready for their surgeries to swap kidneys all at just about the same time!

Cooper got to visit his Daddy just about every day and my parents and sister were so kind to watch him without any notice for an entire week while I spend most of my time and the hospital. We were so grateful for that!

Cooper liked trying out Daddy's hospital bed.

Here Derek is showing Cooper his IV's and is telling him about what they do.

These two pictures illustrate just how bad it was...

pretty darn bad.

This was the first time Cooper got to visit, Derek had to walk down and meet him because of flu restrictions but after a few days they let Cooper come into his room since Derek was there for so long and because flu season was basically over. We were very grateful for the excellent and thoughtful staff of Summit!

Memories of the whole ordeal:

These are my memories since Derek remembers almost nothing of this whole thing - which came in handy when I accidentally told him about one of his father's day gifts. -no big deal, he was still totally surprised when he got the gift!

He was also surprised when his Mom called to say she was coming, he turned to me and asked when I had told her. I answered that HE had called her on the phone the day before.

My other favorite is when he asked me to clear off his bedside tray because "there was candy everywhere!"...this is funny because a) Derek loves candy b) he is never knit-picky/needy of inconsequential things like this...ever c) there were seriously like 5 pieces of candy out (little hard candies for him to suck on)

Derek's friend, family and co-workers were so very kind to him! It made us so grateful for the people we have around us and it made me so grateful for Derek!