Thursday 11 April 2013

In Hospital...Again.

Day 5 in hospital. Ugh. On Saturday night Stephanie started to get shivers and a high fever. We thought we would monitor her and see how she did but we were still very concerned because she just had her shunt surgery 6 weeks ago and she could possibly have a shunt infection.

Most of the day on Sunday she seemed ill and had a low grade fever but no other symptoms. After her midday nap she was burning up again. We headed to the Children's Hospital in Winnipeg. She arrived with a fever of 104 (40). She was taken in immediately and so the process began. We spent the night in Emergency and she was admitted the next day. The concern of course was shunt infection or infection in the cerebral spinal fluid.

Monday afternoon her shunt was tapped and spinal fluid was collected to test for infection. She was put on two iv antibiotics while we waited for results.

So now it has been 72 hours since the blood and spinal fluid cultures were started. The results are negative for infection and Infectious Diseases Department is now going to have to decide if she is going to be taken off the antibiotics and monitored for a couple of days or if she will be allowed home on prescription antibiotics.

The big concern for the hospital is that if she did in fact have some sort of infection, be it shunt/spinal or viral, since she had a few doses of antibiotics before testing, the results might be a false negative. And when the brain/spine are involved, they sure don't take any chances!

Here's to hoping that we manage to get home for the weekend so that Stephanie can enjoy her 14th birthday party!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment