GreenSunflower

It Has Been A Tough Two Weeks

On Saturday Oli developed a cough.  Babe and I had had colds, so we thought little of it. By Monday, she had something called stridor, where she made a hoarse whistling sound when she cried, so I took her to Children's to get an oral steroid called Decadron to ease the swelling in her airway causing the stridor.  She was diagnosed with croup.  On Tuesday night Oli had a fairly high fever that was not responding to Motrin and Tylenol and she did not sleep the whole night, so Wednesday I took her to the pediatrician.  He saw an ear infection and prescribed Amoxicillin for her.  I gave her one dose.  Later on that night, she started "sleeping" with her eyes half open and refused to eat or even suck and stopped peeing, so I took her back to the ER, thinking maybe she was severely dehydrated due to a flu or something.  The doctors agreed this might be the cause and we gave her two fluid boluses and did blood and urine tests.  All the blood and urine tests looked good except for an incease in her immature white blood cells called "bands."  Bands are increased when there in an infection.  The doctor saw this and how the fluid boluses did nothing to improve her state and decided to do a spinal tap.

 

Oli did not cry for her IV, when the put a catheter in for urine, or for her spinal tap, this was a very bad sign.  The spinal fluid had actual pus, like you would see from a bad zit in it.  The white blood cell count for her spinal fluid was 4800.  A critical value when the lab has to make a special call to a nurse or doctor is when it is over 100.  So you can see this was rather serious.  They looked at the spinal fluid under a microscope and found it to be meningiccocal meningitis.  Now when all you googlers go look this up, you will know how serious and close to death Oli could have possibly come.  Oli also had something called petichiae on her body, which is a rash the body gets when there is a very serious infection which is entering the blood.

 

They did a CAT scan which showed a normal brain, so we had hope.  But Oli was still what we call "obtunded" or really out of it.  So they sent her to the ICU.  Where she stayed for 36 hours.  Because of the type of bacteria that caused the meningitis, when antibiotics are given Oli could have entered a state of shock and become very ill and she needed to be monitored closely.  Luckily this never happened.

 

Here spinal fluid culture never grew any new bacteria and they think this is because she got the dose of amoxicillin for her ear infection.  Because while the bacteria she has is very deadly, it is also very sensitive to antibiotics.  We were very lucky she happened to have an ear infection too.  We were also lucky she had croup as well, because the steroids she got for her airway most likely decreased the swelling in her brain and helped to minimize any brain damage she might have had. 

 

Her blood culture also has not grown any bacteria, probably due as well to the amoxicillin.  Immediately after the spinal tap showed visible pus, she was given three broad spectrum antibiotics (ampicillin, claforan, and vancomycin) eventually after the infectious disease specialist saw her, it was reduced down to ampicillin, which she received for 5 twenty four hour periods. 

 

Because I and the doctors were concerned about missed antibiotic doses and the fact that her veins were not the greatest, they started a more permanent IV line called a PICC.  It was removed Tuesday when she came home.

 

On Thursday they spoke to me about severe brain damage, deafness and other things because she was so sick. She is back at baseline and brain damage has not happened and her preliminary hearing screen shows normal hearing.  She has another one in a month.

 

She will be followed closely for development in the coming year, because they were worried about brain damage but her doctor is doing this more as a precaution.  She is helping hold her bottle, babbling and cooing, chewing on her hands, holding her head up, sitting assisted, moving her hands and feet well, making eye contact, and smiling (with flirting included).  All things she was doing before this happened, so we have a lot of hope that things will turn out well. 

 

 Everybody who had contact with her had to take antibiotics because meningiccocus is spread by close casual contact.  We do not know where she got it. 5-10% of the normal population has the bacteria in their respiratory tract, so it could be anyone who got within three feet of her face.  We do not all have it because since a lot of us are exposed frequently in very small doses, we have a small amount of immunity and it would take intense close contact to develop the disease, but not so for a 5 month old with immunity to almost nothing.  Everybody had to take either a one time dose of Cipro or a couple days of Rifampin if they were in close contact with her within the ten day prior to the onset of symptoms.

Today is our first full day home and though she is a little tired, we are moving back into our regular routine and things are getting back to normal.

About Me

My name is Jenn Siva.

I have a daughter named Oli.  She is cute cute cute.  I dote on her incredibly.  She will be the only child gestated in my uterus and pushed from my vagina.  I suffered from a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum during my pregnancy. Hyperemesis is NOT in anyway a form of severe morning sickness.  It does involve vomiting, but more like vomiting 30-40 times a day, severe malnutrition, dehydration, significant weight loss, and it does not resolve around the end of the first trimester.  I had a PICC line and IV nutrition and drugs during the whole thing.  Suffered from sepsis twice, stayed in the ICU once, and when I wasn't vomiting 30-40 times a day despite all of this?  I was dry heaving the contents that weren't in my stomach because I had stopped eating altogether.  It was much like I was possessed by some pregnancy demon flopping about my toilet for 30 mins at a time, multiple times a day, then a little bile or spit would come out, and I would crawl back into my bed, where the room would spin.  It was awful. I almost died from DIC due to sepsis.  My daugther was born early, had to stay in the NICU and came home less than 5lbs. She was considered "small for gestational age"  She is now healthy and we are doing well. But I wont be doing that again.  A surrogate is an option to explore, as my husband wont consider adoption, but we aren't there yet.

I am a nurse.  I work pedi ER.  That means I see ear infections by the dozen, trauma by the tens, oncology tons, meningitis a lot, and a ton of other things.  I am expert at all things from starting IV's to giving Tylenol to sedation to code blue.  I love my job. 

I have suffered from terrible depression.  There is nothing I haven't done in relation to the treatment of severe, treatment resistant, unrelenting, dark, despairing depression.  I picked myself up after 10 years, and figured out how to cope and got on with my life.  It was and is quite a journey.  That little demon sits at the back of my life threatening to come to the forefront, but with so much positive going on, he doesn't have a chance to win anymore.

I have a husband, I call him Babe. He is my strength, my knight in shining armor, my protector, my adviser, my nemesis, my recipe tester, my nag, my everything.  I couldn't face each morning without his stinky breath in my face.  Or his willingness to get up with our daughter while I get more sleep. He needs significantly less of that pesky thing called sleep than I do.

I love to cook.  I can cook with and without gluten.  For four long years I did a gluten free diet.  It saved me from depression, migraines, diarrhea, anxiety, and eczema, but after my pregnancy something changed, gluten doesn't do to my body what it used to.  I can eat it with little ill now.  So have resumed my previous gluten loving life.  If I meet someone new to gluten free life though, I will bake them something wonderful just to help them cope.

I have a dog named Boogie. I used to love her like what I thought loving a child was.  But really you cant love a dog like a child.  You don't know this until you have a child.  There is nothing comparable.  I still love this little 12lber though. She is terrified of Oli though.  I think she dreads the day Oli walks and can grab her curly little tail.  Boogie likes Oli's toys, but little does she know soon she will become Oli's favorite toy, and much to her delight I am sure, garbage disposal.