Birthday Plans

Yesterday was my birthday. We wanted to celebrate by heading out to Wimberley to stay at the Cypress Creek Cabins and visit Blue Hole and do some shopping, hiking, etc.  But,  I have been reborn as a germaphobe and remain on quarantine at least for the rest of the week.

This is because early Saturday morning, Linden started running a fever of 100.9. I called the doctor and spoke to a nurse who sounded very worried and instructed us to "go on as soon as possible to Dell Children's." Not what you want to hear about your four week old baby boy.

When we got to Dell Children's they triaged him and his fever was actually 101.5 but all other vital signs were normal so Josh and I thought they might monitor him, give him some tylenol, etc...but then the ER tech told us that it was, in fact, very hard for babies this age to develop a fever and that they would have to do a series of routine procedures including starting an IV,  doing a lumbar puncture (more commonly and scarily known as a spinal tap) and drawing blood for a CBC.  Josh looked suddenly like he had been buried alive.

But, they took us back to an ER room and the doctor came in to speak to us. Turns out that they were suspecting meningitis or some other rancorous infection, or nothing. They couldn't tell until they did the tests. They did the lumbar puncture and took the blood, which although they had to scrunch him up and he cried a little, these weren't so bad. The IV was horrible. I cried. A lot. They had to stick him three different times and Josh's job was to keep dipping Linden's pacifier in what they call Sweet Ease to keep his little mind concentrated on the sugar syrup. Each time the nurses got the IV going, the vein "blew" before they could get an antibiotic in. Until finally they got it going in his tiny hand and started him on a drip of a combo of two antibiotics and an antiviral in case he did have either bacterial or viral meningitis.

Then came the first part of the waiting game. We got to the hospital around 8:30 AM and by the time 11:30 rolled around the doctors had confirmed that Linden did in fact have meningitis as the tests had confirmed that his white blood cell count in his spinal fluid was above 400 (normal is around 25). When they told us, I made an audible gasp. The doctors only knew prelim information, they didn't know anything but yes, he had meningitis, so an ocean of dread settled over me. Why I do this I am not sure but when I don't know all the info for a situation, I start to fear the worst. I asked the doctor what would happen if Linden had bacterial meningitis, and what the side effects were. He said, "I could tell you all the horror stories but let's try to be positive until we know for sure." Ok, I would try to be positive.

What I tried to think was how lucky we were to live in Austin and be so close to world class children's medical care. I thought of my friends who had been at Dell Children's with their nine day old and how they had gone home safely and their son was now a year and a half. I thought about emailing all of my family and friends but we just couldn't yet. Not until we knew more.

Around 12:30 they transferred us to the NICU where we met with another doctor, Dr. Kelley.  Bless his heart, he was trying to be reassuring but when you don't know anything yet, and you work in the medical field you have to be vague. Over the course of the three days I really started to like him but that first meeting was very painful to sit through. He told us of the possibility that Linden could be in the hospital on IV antibiotics for 21 days. 21 days? They could barely keep an IV in him for 2 hours, how about 21 days? Plus, he kept answering our questions with hypotheticals and med speak that effectively gave us the run around, all the while apologizing for his vagueness. I couldn't blame him, I knew that he knew nothing but when he was about to leave the room, my only question for him was, "Is my son going to be ok?" A question which he didn't have an answer for either.

Later in the afternoon, Dr. Hague, an infectious disease doctor, came to see us to try and figure out what might have caused the meningitis. We told her that we had all been sick with some mystery illness that felt like the flu with joint pains and low grade fever. So she did eye, nose and rectal swabs on Linden for a myriad of viruses, everything from Herpes to Enterovirus to Toxoplasmosis.

To her, our mystery virus was encouraging news but it also brought on the second waiting game, which lasted through two days, two different IV lines and lots of seriously mediocre hospital food. They were waiting on the swabs to come back with something, some info of merit and for the cultures that they did from his blood to reveal whether the meningitis was bacterial or not. And finally on Sunday night when the doctors were rounding and giving each other their reports we heard them tell us through a closed quarantine curtain that the swab for enterovirus had come back positive. Incase you are like, Oh NO! That sounds bad, it's actually good news since enterovirus is a very common summer bug that causes aches and pains and mild fevers in healthy adults and children but in babies, it can lead to more serious infections like viral meningitis.

The doctor on duty, the very British Dr. Michael ripped open the curtain and said, "Did you all hear that? That is very promising news!" We all promptly did a happy dance, albeit a bit subdued since we were still waiting on the bacterial culture to come back negative. But, to our doctors, this was a chance to celebrate the fact that the type of meningitis that Linden had was something he would and could get over on his own.

So this was Sunday evening and they wanted to keep us another night until the bacterial culture ruled out anything else. They let us move to a room where Linden could stay with us, off the monitors and that's where we played the third waiting game until Monday morning when Dr. Kelley came in to tell us that everything was negative and we'd be going home sometime in the afternoon. Happy dance was not subdued at this point, we were all around giddy and elated to be out of the woods.

Through all of this, Linden never lost his appetite and never missed a milk meal. I am so impressed by how strong and resilient he seems to be. During one IV insertion he didn't even cry. I can't wait to see what he grows up to be like and I am so glad to be home with him.