Consider yourself lucky...

If your child gets a stomach bug, and your biggest concern is whether he or she will drink enough Pedialyte to stay hydrated...consider yourself lucky.

If you are more concerned with whether it will spread to the rest of your family than whether your child will have to be hospitalized because of it...consider yourself lucky.

If you know for a certainty that this just a passing thing, and don't have to make emergent doctor's appointments and have long texting conversations with your child's cardiologist about it...consider yourself lucky.

If your child gets a stomach bug, and never, not even once, does the term "heart failure" cross your frontal lobe...consider yourself oh so very, very lucky.

Bodie has been battling something since last Wednesday. We think it's a stomach bug. But here's the thing about non specific stomach bugs. The symptoms (nausea, stomach pain, bloating, puffiness, crankiness, lethargy and listlessness) can also look a heck of a lot like heart failure.

He's been alternating between being a kind of tired version of himself, and looking like this.

Right after I took this picture, he laid down on the bench and said he was too tired to get up - and we were eating out at a restaurant.

Something is off, for sure. 

Is it his body fighting off a bug? 

Or is his heart tiring out and pushing back against the crazy task it's been asked to do for the last 6 years? 

It's probably a stomach bug. But here's the thing about having a child with a complex medical condition - you don't get to bank on probably. These kids can really go into heart failure at any time. When you have a child with a critical congenital heart defect, you kind of have to assume heart failure until you are proven otherwise.

So we're headed into the cardiologist tomorrow morning bright and early. She's squeezing us in for an echo and to check everything out.

We think it's just a stomach bug. We're pretty sure it's just a stomach bug, exacerbated by me taking the kids out of town the past few days and him not being able to just rest. He definitely seemed better today than he has the last few days. But we've honestly not seen Bodie this lethargic from a bug in a very, very long time. This kid just doesn't get sick that often, and usually handles it pretty well when he does. So the thoughts are lingering that this could indeed be heart failure. And the fears are very, very real.

Please join us in praying for Bodie tonight and tomorrow. Pray that his echo looks good, that his heart function is fine, and that this is indeed just a bug. And pray that he recovers and is back up and running quickly. And, if you're not having to worry about things like possible heart failure when your child is sick...again, consider yourself very lucky.