Casa Jonsson

The last 3½ weeks have not been the easiest time for Casa Jonsson. During the last weekend of January we were at our kindergartener’s first piano recital when our newborn had what appeared to be some sort of seizure. We spent the next three days in the neonatal ICU ruling out seizures and heart problems with all manner of tests. Thankfully, the doctors concluded that the scary episodes are due to acid reflux, a common condition that we’ve dealt with at length with our older two kids.

Less than a week after we arrived home from the hospital we discovered that our three-year-old was coming down with rotavirus, an ugly and demented step-cousin to influenza that doesn’t know when to quit. We went to the emergency room that weekend to get him rehydrated via IV fluids. Meanwhile, the other three kids camped out at their grandparents’ house for several days until the worst of the virus was gone.

Then we disinfected the house and brought everybody home. Despite our efforts to the contrary, our newborn got rotavirus this past weekend. We were worried. He’d needed a spinal tap only two weeks before during the previous hospital stay, and a trip to the ER would likely require another. Moreover, an illness that hits toddlers hard can be very grave for infants.

God has been gracious to us in the past few days to permit us to keep our newborn from getting dehydrated without having to see the inside of an ER again.

This process has been a reminder of how much we as rich Americans have to be thankful for when it comes to medical care. We were particularly impressed by the work of Ronald McDonald House Charities while we were at Texas Children’s Hospital for several days. The Ronald McDonald Family Room program provides bed-and-breakfast-like accommodations inside the hospital (our facility was just down the hall from where our baby was in the Level-2 NICU) for families of children admitted to the hospital. It was less like a B&B than like crashing at a friend’s house: a stocked kitchen, washing machines, Internet access, cable-TV and a DVD library. There were books and magazines to read and friendly faces of staff and volunteers making sure we were as comfortable as possible.

Forget what you learned in Super Size Me about how Mickey D’s disappears the vegetarian girlfriends of independent filmmakers and passes off their flesh as hamburger patties. Go out and buy a Chipotle burrito for lunch. Do it to thank that evil megacorporation for the philanthropy they do among parents in 10 countries around the world—rich and poor—who have hospitalized kids.