Benaiah's Spiders

The plagues have continued to march on in the Tuininga home in seemingly endless procession.  The most recent victim has been Benaiah.

We went yesterday to get some blood work done to check on a super-enlarged lymph node.  We discovered that he too, has an unknown bacterial infection that we are trying to fight with antibiotics.  It was also discovered that he has a pretty bad case of malaria.  Last night, before bed, he started drugs to fight both.

At midnight he woke up screaming in bed, so we brought him into our room and settled him down on our couch.  A few minutes later he was screaming and had squirmed up to the top of the couch.  He was hallucinating that spiders were "being mean" to him and crawling all over his pillow and blanket and legs.

Give me Jimmy's hallucination of legos making noise or Katelyn's hallucination of the floors and walls straightening out any day...but spiders in my bed??  No thank you!!

We spent the next hour trying to console him and trying to explain that his sickness was making him see the spiders.  He didn't buy it.  He kept trying to pick the spiders off of himself and off of Eric.  We tried moving him to our bed, back to his bed, back to the couch...nothing could calm him down.  We tried giving him something to drink and turning on a light for him, but he continued to insist that spiders were everywhere.

Finally, Eric and I prayed together and then Eric brought Benaiah back into our bed and had the following conversation...

Eric (holds up hand in spider formation): Benaiah, you see this spider?
Benaiah (through tears): yes...
Eric:  It's saying, "Good afternoon, Benaiah!"
Benaiah: oh...
Eric:  Now the spider is going to go to sleep on your leg...is that okay?
Benaiah:  okay...
Eric: Say good night to the spider.
Benaiah: goodnight.

Then, just like that, Benaiah rolled over and went to sleep!

Eric and I had a good laugh and then went back to sleep too...

We would covet your prayers for continued health in our home and very specifically that Benaiah's body would respond to both the antibiotic and antimalarial meds.  William is doing okay still...he has periods of tiredness during the day and is still at about 80%, but we praise the Lord that he has been fever-free for 5 days now.  Jimmy spiked another fever yesterday, but seems to be better today.  We would also pray that if the Lord wills, we will be able to figure out what has been causing so much continued sickness, so we can use more specific medicines.  Thank you for your prayers!!