A scary weekend

Unfortunately, I am blogging to you live from Children's Hospital. :( Everything is ok, but we had quite a scare...I'll start from the beginning.

Friday night, Liam nursed around 4:30pm then fell asleep; he napped until around 7:30, so for almost 2.5 hours. Kind of late in the day for a long nap for him, evenings tend to be his more alert time, but I didn't think too much of it while he was napping. He didn't want to nurse when he first woke up, so Brian gave him a bath. He was screaming like crazy after the bath, so I tried to nurse him again, but he refused & spit up a bunch. I passed him back off to Brian to change his clothes, when I heard Brian ask the dreaded question: "Hey Emmy...is it just me being paranoid, or does he feel really warm?" Sure enough, his temp was 100.4. Not incredibly high, but I remembered reading something about calling into the office with any type of fever when they're this little (he'd just turned 8 weeks on Tuesday-no shots yet) Sure enough, they wanted me to bring him straight to Children's Hospital.

So, at 8:30pm, Liam & I were off to the hospital. By the time we got here & registered, his fever was up to 103. By now, I was incredibly scared. Once they saw that temp, they gave him tylenol & took us back to a room & we were seen by a doctor right away. The doctor explained that they needed to run a series of tests including bloodwork, a urine screen and a spinal tap. *insert mommy panic here* I managed to stay in the room & try my best to comfort him during the blood work & the catheter, I had to leave for the tap, I didn't think I could handle it. It's a good thing I left, because he was too squirmy to get the test done, they had to give up.

They admitted us around midnight and we finally got to a room around 2am. We were then seen by a different doctor, who pretty much reiterated what the doctors in the ER had said: they were pretty sure that Liam had come down with whatever virus Jake & Brian had last week (if you remember my 4th of July post, Jake was running a high fever....last weekend, Brian came down with the same thing) So chances are, he had been exposed to those germs. But, since he's so little & hadn't been vaccinated yet, they had to be aggressive with the testing and rule out anything else aside from just a regular virus. The doctors finally left my room around 5am, told me to get some sleep & they would most likely attempt to do the spinal tap again in the morning.

The spinal tap was important because they were testing for meningitis; which is, unfortunately, what my poor little baby has. When the doctor gave me the news, I felt like I was going to pass out & he immediately told me to not cry, that it's the "good" kind. The meningitis that's always in the news is bacterial (that's the really bad kind), Liam has viral meningitis. They do believe that it started as whatever virus Jake & Brian had since he had been exposed to it, but that for whatever reason, his then turned into meningitis.

So now, we wait. While I don't completely understand all of the details, they are still trying to rule out 100% that it's NOT bacterial; and to do that, they have to wait for the tests they took to grow in a lab. We were admitted here Friday night and will most likely be discharged tomorrow (Monday) at some point, once those labs come back clear. He's technically considered to be in isolation, but we have been able to have people in the room (my mom was here yesterday with me while Brian spent some time with Jake at home; today, my parents are watching Jake so Brian can be here with me) and we don't have to wear masks, but the staff coming in & out have been in masks. There is one perk to isolation, in that we have our own room. The staff here at the hospital has been wonderful, and I definitely feel that he's getting the best care he could possibly receive.

I will be sure to do an updated post once we are discharged...please keep our baby in your thoughts.