The "M" word

One thing that a parent fears is when your child is sick with some disease that could be serious. Last week, I experienced those fears, and the only thing I could do is pray.

Last week, Corinne had been feeling sick. I thought it was simply an upper respiratory infection, maybe an ear infection, and that it would just go away. Wednesday night, she started having a fever, and it continued to be around 100 - 101 throughout the night. In the morning, she came to me and said she wasn't feeling well at all. I gave her some medicine, and then she ran to the bathroom and threw up. (Of course, she does this in MY bathroom, LOL! I had to clean up where she missed.) This is when I got concerned. I made a decision to get her to the doctor.

I called the doctor's office, and of course, her doctor was all booked up, so I insisted that Corinne see someone there. They made an appointment with the ENT doctor for 9:30 am. We head to the ENT One happy and good thing about this appointment was the nurse. When she called us back, she said, "I'm your nurse, Maddie. You are Queen Corinne, and this is your throne. I am your servant." She showed us to a room with a chair that moves every which way. It was a good thing, because Corinne had to throw up again in the middle of the examination, and the "servant" gave Corinne some ice chips to munch on.

Basically, the doctor said that she did have a minor ear infection, but that wouldn't cause the other symptoms she was experiencing. She told the doctor that she's been having diarrhea, stiff neck, stomach pain, and sensitivity to light. He turned to me and told me, "I don't want to scare you, but she is showing symptoms of meningitis. I want to make sure and see if I can get her regular doctor to come down and see her." Well, he couldn't get her doctor to come down, so they made an appointment for us to come back and see him. Now, I've already paid $35 for the ENT, and I was going to have to pay another $25 to see her regular doctor, of which I tried to get in earlier to see. The appointment wasn't until 1:30 pm, so we left and went home.

Good thing about having access to the internet is that you can look up things that you really have an interest in, such as looking up "meningitis". We found out that there were two types of meningitis: viral and bacterial. Of the two types, bacterial is the worst and most contagious. If you have viral, then it's not so bad, and basically you have to let it run it's course, like a cold. The bacterial kind needs more care, and more medicine. Plus, you have to alert people that you have been in close contact with that you have bacterial meningitis. There is more information than I am letting on, but this is the basic information.

So, armed with this basic information, we went to see her regular doctor at 1:30 pm. He looked at her, confirmed that she had an ear infection, and couldn't confirm or deny that she had meningitis. He felt that she didn't have meningitis, but he couldn't rule it out, and told us that the only way to rule it out was to have a spinal tap done. He told us that they couldn't do it there at the doctor's office, and that if we went to the ER, they would be able to do that. They called ahead to a local hospital, and sent us with the doctor's notes so that the ER staff can view them.

OK. I'm not made of money, and I really didn't have any "extra" money to spend on all of this. In fact, I had to borrow this money that I was using in order to get Corinne to the doctor. When your child is sick, you have to make a way for them to be seen by the doctor. So, that was the case here. I was now looking at another $150 co-pay for the ER. But what choice do you have. If she is sick, she is sick, and you have to find a way to do it.

We get to the ER, and they start to work on her right away. The doctor comes in, looks at her, and says the same thing that her regular doctor says: he didn't think she has meningitis, but he didn't want to rule it out. The only way to know for sure was to do the spinal tap. At this point, he was going to send us home, and told us that if she has any more symptoms, to come back. I looked at him and told him, "We saw two doctors today who told us that she 'might' have meningitis, and that the only way to know for sure was to do the spinal tap. You don't know for sure, either. Since we are here, let's do that spinal tap so that we can know for sure. If she doesn't have meningitis, great. We can go from here." Then I asked Corinne if she wanted to do this because since she was 18 years old, it was ultimately her decision, and she agreed.

She was told of the risks and complications that could happen with the spinal tap. Then they decided to give an IV because it would help with the spinal tap, and she might be dehydrated. After the IV bag was empty, they proceeded with the painful spinal tap. It hurt to see Corinne in pain, and I prayed that she wouldn't be in pain anymore than necessary. The doctor missed the first time, and got blood in the needle, so he had to get another needle and try again. The second time was taking longer, and he couldn't quite get to the spinal cord. He almost gave up when he finally got the needle in. If he couldn't get the needle in, the other option would be to have a CAT scan. The CAT scan wouldn't be as reliable as the spinal tap, but would provide enough information in order to decide whether or not she had meningitis.

While waiting for results, they started her on another bag. The IV seemed to be helping her because she was getting hungry and she was starting to feel a little better. The IV bags take about 1 1/2 hours to go through, so around 7 pm we received the results and the bag was almost empty. The results indicated that she DID NOT have meningitis. We had a huge sigh of relief.

I took her home, got her something to eat, and got her settled in. Since she had the spinal tap, she had to take it easy, so she moved very slowly. I was just glad that she didn't have meningitis.

My birthday was the next day, December 19th, so my birthday present this year was knowing that my child did not have meningitis. Happy Birthday to me!