Urgent News, Evelyn

Everyone:

Quoc and Jessica called me this morning and informed me that Evelyn is in urgent condition and they wanted me to help pass the news along.  Evelyn contracted spinal meningitis.  Spinal meningitis is an extremely serious illness and happens when a bacterial infection gets past the barrier to the spinal cord.  The state of the matter is that they were able to catch it very early, which is a very good thing.  The best case scenario is that Quoc, Jessica, and Evelyn will be living at the hospital for the next week while Evelyn is treated and watched over.  They could be there for much longer depending on how things go.  There is a possibility of long term complications, but as of now, since they caught it so early, she is looking well.  They have her on antibiotics and her fever and organ functions have stabalized.  They have a team of doctors who will be taking a look at her within the next couple hours and hopefully can find the specific bacteria that caused the infection so they can better target it.  Since the nature of the infection is exposure to bacteria, visitors should be limited since any further infections could weaken her even more.  The doctors told Quoc and Jessica to be "cautiously optimistic" and I think we all should as well.

Quan