Evelyn - Meningitis

Hey guys,

So, here's another status. The doctors have identified the bacteria that is associated with this spinal meningitis and it is E coli.  Meningitis is life threatening but at this point in Evee's treatment and progress has gotten her out of that category.  Evee is responding well to the antibiotics that they started on her early on.  Also, this E coli doesn't have resistances to any of the antibiotics that they are administering.  The big take away at this point is that the swelling of the fluid in the brain can cause long term developmental complications.  At this point, that's our biggest concern.

How is Evee doing.  I've been with her since that first day and it's amazing how many messages you can start to pick up from the way they cry and behave.  The first day, she was lethargic and pretty much couldn't wake up.  She had a fever and would have very weak crying that petered off into constant weak moans.  You could tell that any movement caused her to ache as she would cry hard then moan.  She also would not eat that first day, once we got to the hospital they hooked her up to an IV and also late that night, she chugged a bottle of pedialite pretty hard.

Over the past day she's actually been feeding on momma's milk again along with the IV.  She now takes mommy's bottle every 2 hours and gives good healthy burps, poops and pees.  She's still very achy to moving around but they've been giving her some tylenol which has helped her to relax and sleep a bit more.  It still breaks my heart to feel her with the the 100 degree fevers.  The doctors do say that during her fight this week she'll be in and out of these fevers.

I'm trying to be as descriptive as possible, Jess is a lot better about describing all the facts.  As with the first 9 days, days and nights begin to blur.  On top of that, this ordeal has seemingly turned hours into days.  Since we got into the hospital Monday afternoon, it's now been almost 48 hours.  To me these past two days has felt like an eternity.  As mom, dad, craig and sandy saw, I was literally cracked in half the first day at the thought that I could lose Evee.  But today, I'm hopeful that she might make a full recovery.  And if not that, I am humbly greatful for Evee even with some developmental issues in the future.

Grandpa Craig is great at making jokes to lighten our hearts.  He says that if Evee does have hearing loss in the future, they'll learn sign language together as his hearing is not so great as well.

We're hangin in there, we are trying to keep visitors to a minimum to keep Evee from having to catch any other bugs on top of this one.  Feel free to forward this to anyone you feel wants to know how we're doing.

Quoc