Dear Friends and Family.....

Rachel has been in the hospital in Kansas City for a week now. They admitted her last Friday when I took her in for her weekly checkup. She was having trouble breathing and after many tests I was told she'd be spending a while at "Hotel Childrens Mercy." She has a form of pneumonia called Pneumacystic Carinii Pneumonia (PCP) which often hits people with HIV/AIDS infected diseases as well as others with low immune systems.

Part of the week's stay (Saturday-Thursday) was spent in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. Rachel needed round the clock observation/care during this period to make sure her oxygen saturation levels remained steady. Diana and I traded off stays a bit more frequently while in I.C.U. than we usually do as we rarely got any sleep at night and two days pretty much did us in.

Sitting in Intensive Care at Children's Mercy is an opportunity to see the whole hospital drama unfold before your eyes. Many of the rooms are arranged in a partial circle around the main nurse's station. You see children coming in with many different problems/illnesses.... a child abuse victim one night, a baby recovering from heart surgery the next day, a boy who's fallen from a building a few hours later is air-lifted in from southeast Kansas. Sometimes while Rachel was sleeping I would just sit and listen to what was happening around me.

Late Thursday afternoon Rachel finally got the go-ahead and was transfered back to the Oncology/Hematology Ward. But it was a whole new world as Children's Mercy Hospital had just opened their brand new Oncology/Hematology Ward the previous day.... a beautiful place with great rooms for the kids... AND PERMANENT BEDS FOR THE PARENTS! YAY!!! No more sleeping on little fold-out beds.

Over the weekend Rachel continued to mend very slowly. She wears a light, loosely fitting oxygen mask during the day and a tighter fitting one at night that helps her lungs expand during breathing (I hope I got that right... I get confused when medical folks explain things sometimes). She will go home when she can freely breathe on her own and maintain a healthy oxygen saturation level... we're not sure how long that will take.

Diana and I have both noticed a change in Rachel this stay at the hospital. She's a seven-year old kid but she's learned some things about communicating on an adult level that surprise us at times. Earlier last week a doctor was explaining a procedure to her that he'd be doing and she calmly told him that she'd like him to do it another way. She was sitting in a chair and he came over and got face to face with her (she likes it when people acknowledge her like that) and they worked out a way to do the test that would be less frightening for her. I was dumb-founded, proud, yet saddened. It's hard at times for a parent to let go of a child as they mature and make decisions without Mom/Dad jumping in and taking over... but usually this doesn't come into full play until the teen years. I was an observer during this discussion.

I tried to calm Rachel down at first and get her to go along with the doctor's original plan of operation, but the doctor gently cut me off by coming over and talking directly to her. I shut up. The agreed upon plan turned out well.

Seven years old and working out medical procedures with a doctor.... she *should* be working out whether to play kickball or tag with the neighborhood kids instead of this. Kind of gives me a better understanding of those hardened little faces of refugee children I see on the T.V. news in far off places.

We thank you for your continued prayers/good wishes.

Bill and Diana Sowers