Home Sweet Home!!

We were finally discharged from the hospital around 12:30pm yesterday after the labs finally came back that it was definitely viral and not bacterial meningitis. The dr. had told us the day before that they were running tests on the fluid from the spinal tap to see if it was caused by a particular kind of virus; as he put it, it was kind of a luck of the draw test...if it came back positive, that was the best case scenario as we would know with 100% certainty that it was a viral case. If it came back negative, it didn't necessary mean anything bad, just that it wasn't being caused by the particular kind of virus they were testing for. We lucked out though, in that the test came back positive for that virus, so we were able to go home!

Our discharge instructions were pretty simple, the doc said that the symptoms of meningitis can last for up to 2 weeks, but we should see an improvement within a few days. Liam is probably experiencing things like body aches, a headache, sensitivity to light, etc...and could continue to run a low fever for a few days. His temp when we came home yesterday was 100.1, but it was back down to normal by the time he went to bed. He slept fine last night and woke up the same as he usually does to eat, and his nursing has improved since we were in the hospital. So as long as I can manage to avoid picking up this virus (since somehow I'm the only one who hasn't been affected yet!) then we should be in the clear soon. Phew!

I mentioned it the other day, but it's worth saying again that our stay at Children's was wonderful. We were there from Friday evening around 9pm until Monday at 1pm and in that time, we met with a LOT of different staff members and everyone was wonderful. My heart goes out to families of children with serious illnesses who have to spend so much time there, I can't imagine what they go through every day.

I'm looking forward to spending time at home this week with all of my boys (and Gracie, of course!) They said Jake had a rough morning at school yesterday; no particular incidents, but he was just sad and only wanted to sit in a teacher's lap and cried for a bit after Brian left. I think it was just confusing for him....I put him to bed Friday night, he woke up Saturday morning, I was gone, Liam was gone. Then Brian left & he stayed with my parents, then Brian came back, my parents left, I was gone for days. Hopefully we'll get back on track! Here he is, showing off his many cute faces the other day:



And, the faces of Liam....

a serious thinker



angry baby!