Spinal Meningitis

"
Stephen is up," Russell told me as he carried his baby brother into the kitchen.  Stephen had turned one a couple months earlier, but he still liked to be carried around sometimes.  It seemed like he wasn't as energetic as he had been before he got sick with viral encephalitis.  I blamed the phenobarbital we had to give him daily.  The neurologist had insisted he take it to ensure he didn't have any more seizures, but I hated the way it made him so mellow.  I missed my bouncy, rambunctious little boy.

It was the middle of the afternoon, ten days before Christmas.  Russell, who was in half day kindergarten, got home from school at 12:30. After fixing him some lunch I began helping him wrap Christmas presents on the kitchen table.  Stephen was taking a nap, but for some reason Russell went into their bedroom and got him up about 2:00. 

Stephen was really cranky, so I put him in his high chair and tried to give him some lunch, but he just cried.  I felt his forehead and he was burning up, so I fixed him a bottle with Baby Tylenol and sat down on the couch to hold him.  He drank the whole bottle, but still was cranky and hot, so I took him into the bathroom and made him sit in a tub of cool water, but even that didn't seem to cool him down. 

"What could be the matter?" I wondered as I searched through the medicine box for the thermometer.  I put it under Stephens arm pit and held him close until it beeped.  "This can't be right," I worried.  The thermometer read 104 degrees, and if I remembered right you added one degree when it was taken under the arm.  That meant Stephen had a temperature of 105 degrees! 

Anxiously, I called the pediatrician's office, only to be told that our doctor was sick so we would have to talk to one of his associates. 

"Never mind" I told the secretary.  "I'll call our family doctor instead, since he knows Stephen already."  But when I called that office I was told our family doctor was delivering a baby.  Darn

I called the pediatrician's office again, and this time was turned over to a Dr. Tee, a lady doctor who worked with our pediatrician. 

"Bring Stephen right down," she told me after I explained to her what was going on.

I had to go by the elementary school on the way to pick up Linnea and Holly.  By this time Stephen was throwing up, too. He would cry and thrash around for a minute, then go sound to sleep for a little while, then wake up crying again.  Dr. Tee worked us right in and was very concerned with Stephen's behavior.  Finally she decided to take us down to the hospital emergency room and do a spinal tap.

"This can't really be happening," I told mom on the phone when I called her from the doctors office.   "Things like this just don't happen to me, especially not twice in the same year."   


Mom said she would meet us at the emergency room, so I got all the kids back in the car and we rushed to the hospital.  Poor Stephen was so sick!  I tried to call Sheldon from the hospital but he had already left work. 

Dr. Tee did the spinal tap, but it came back clear.  Still, she didn't feel satisfied and she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, so she had the nurses start an IV in Stephen's arm and began giving him high doses of penicillin and another medicine used to treat spinal meningitis. Then she admitted him into the hospital. 

Dad came down with mom, and he gave Stephen a Priesthood blessing,  I was so grateful for a father who had the power to administer to my little boy, then they took the other kids home.  I went with Stephen and we got him settled into a room.  He sure was one sick little boy.  In the emergency room his temperature was 107 degrees, but soon the medicine helped him settle down, and pretty soon he was sound asleep. 

"Meningitis affects the brain that way," the doctor told me.  "It makes you really drowsy."

Sheldon got to the hospital a little later.  He happened to run into my cousin's husband, who was also a pediatrician, on the elevator on the way up.   Sheldon explained to him what was happening.  The doctor said he'd never seen meningitis caught so early, and he'd be really surprised if the tests came back positive.


“I've never seen meningitis caught so early,” he told Sheldon. “I'd be really surprised if the test comes back positive, but if it does you are really lucky to catch it so soon. If it is meningitis you'll be in the hospital ten to twelve days.”

"Ten to twelve days!"  I exclaimed when Sheldon told me.  "That would mean at least Christmas!"

We had a pretty awful night.  The nurses came in every little while to take Stephen's vitals and he was restless.  Hospital chairs are pretty nasty, too. 

In the morning my cousin's husband stopped by.  He'd looked at our charts, and it was spinal meningitis.  He couldn't believe it.  He had talked to his other associates, too. They all agreed that they would have sent Stephen home, thinking he had the flue.  Probably our own pediatrician and our family doctor would have done the same.  I was so glad that we had to go to Dr. Tee, and that she listened to her woman's intuition!  Since she started the medication so early the virus hadn't even had a chance to start producing the toxin that damages the brain.

 It wasn't long before Stephen began to feel better, but he had to have high doses of penicillin, six times as much as we could give him orally, so we had to stay in the hospital. Thank goodness we only had to stay seven days.  Still, that was a very long time for a little boy, and even longer for me, since I was worried about getting ready for Christmas. 

I tried to do as much as I could while I was there, but it was difficult.  I had been working on building a doll house for Linnea and Holly.  It was really cute, but not finished. I had Sheldon bring all the stuff down to the hospital and I tried to work on it there, but I got myself into trouble instead.

There were signs in Stephen's room saying not to use the electrical outlets.  I couldn't figure out why, I mean, surely when he was no longer hooked up to any machines it wouldn't matter if I just used one plug in the corner for a radio so we could listen to Christmas music and another one for my glue gun so I could work on the house.  I talked myself into believing it was alright, so I plugged in my radio and glue gun and went to work.  But glue guns smell hot sometimes.  It only took a few minutes for me to decide I'd better unplug it so I wouldn't get into trouble.  It only took the nurse a couple of minutes more to rush into our room, sure the hospital was on fire!  Brother! While she checked all the vents and electrical equipment I sat quietly in the corner, knowing I should tell her it was my glue gun that had made the smell but not wanting to admit I had ignored the signs.  Finally the nurse decided everything was OK and she went away, but I sure felt like a coward, and a lier.  Needless to say, I didn't finish the doll house in the hospital.


We got to bring Stephen home two days before Christmas.  That didn't give me much time to get ready, but it was such a relief to get home that I didn't care.  Best of all, our pediatrician decided there was no reason to continue giving him phenobarbital any more.

"If that little boy is prone to having seizures, he certainly should have had one with a temperature of 107 degrees,"  he said.  That made me so happy, and within a few days Stephen was sparkling again.