On Saturday night, April 6, 2013 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.
At 72 hours the blood and spinal fluid culture results were negative for infection and Infectious Diseases Department decided to take her off the antibiotics and monitor her for a couple of days to see if any infection symptoms returned. After 7 days in hospital she was cleared to go home, given that I would continue to monitor her for a return of any symptoms for a couple of weeks. Any fever was not to be taken lightly.
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!
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