a no good day

here is a terrible story that turned out fine. on sunday, when matt got up to change heath's diaper he thought he felt warm. he took his temperature and it was 101.9. the hospital and our doctor had both told us that if your baby had a fever you needed to go to the doctor right away. of course it was sunday, so our doctor's office wasn't open... so we called the nurse hotline and asked where we should go and they said (lucky us!) to the emergency room. so we went. and i thought they would see heath and realize he had no other symptoms and send us on our way and it would be an expensive, annoying little part of our day. not the case, friends. not the case.

when a baby who is under six weeks has a fever of over 100.7, it is routine procedure to get a urine sample, do a blood draw, and perform a lumbar puncture to collect spinal fluid. i just started immediately bawling. i almost wanted to tell them never mind and just walk right out of the hospital with him. of course i couldn't do that because what if something happened to him and i would have been forever guilty over it. so we took heath up to the nicu where they are better at  performing procedures on tiny little bodies. the nicu pediatrician came to talk to us about the procedure and explained that their big fear was spinal meningitis, which can just be really terrible, and that they were going to assume the worst until the baby and the test results could prove otherwise. 

this meant that heath would be hooked up to an iv and given intense antibiotics to treat meningitis. if the test results came back negative, he would be taken off the antibiotics and could go home. okay. reasonable. EXCEPT that the test results take THREE DAYS to come back. which meant that we were checking into the hospital for at least three days. then a british, male nurse named jim came in and took heath away to get a million terrible pokes in a sterile environment where i could not be. and matt took beckett outside to run around and i sat in an empty hospital room (our home for the next three days) and cried and cried. 

the inital spinal fluid reports came back a few hours later and looked "suspicious" and the doctor said she would not be surprised if he did have spinal meningitis and it was good we got him in so quickly and early. and then we waited three days for test results and it was terrible and boring and the saddest for heath and we all just wanted to go home and were dreading hearing that the tests were positive. if heath did have spinal meningitis the antibiotics needed to be administered through an iv for three weeks. yes! three weeks in the hospital. luckily (thank the lord) the tests came back negative and heath just had a virus.

in the long run, i'm sure this whole experience was more traumatizing on matt and i then it was on heath, who will never remember it. especially since from now on whenever either of my children have a temperature i will forever be paranoid that they have spinal meningitis because really, how do you know?! i hate it. i also hate the idea of families that spend months in the nicu with very sick babies. it must be the scariest... i can not imagine. i am so thankful though, that heath is fine and healthy and safe.

is your heart broken yet? it's just the worst.

headed home!

goodbye hospital germs!