On Monday, Scotlyn came in with Londyn and woke us up like she normally does (climbing all over me) and I noticed that she felt super hot. I got up and took her temperature and she had a 104 degree fever. When Scotlyn gets fevers, they're normally high for some reason-she doesn't mess around. I gave her some Tylenol and watched her for the next couple hours. During the beginning of the day, she was playing around and acting like "normal Scotlyn". After her nap, her fever had spiked again and she had become so much more lethargic and wouldn't let me get an inch away from her so I felt like I should call her doctor. I would normally wait another day to see if any other symptoms showed up, but I really felt like I needed to get her in.
Before her nap:
After her nap:
I took her into the doctor and when we got there, her temp was pushing 105, which alarmed them a little bit. The doctor was concerned that she didn't have any other symptoms beyond a fever and being clingy, so after a quick urinalysis in his office to check for a bladder infection (they used a catheter that caused her to scream every time she peed for two days),he sent us over to Denton Presby to have some blood work done and a chest x-ray to make sure it wasn't pneumonia or something he just couldn't hear or see. All of her blood work and x-rays came back fine and the doctor called and said it was just a virus, probably Roseola (a very mild form of the measles-very glad she was vaccinated) and that it normally causes a really high fever for 3 days and ends in a rash. I was just supposed to keep giving her Tylenol and Motrin and it would clear up.
The next morning, she was about the same, but was getting more lethargic. After her 3 hour nap (hers normally are 1.5 hours), she woke up and couldn't hold her head up and was grabbing for everything around her to hold on to. I gave her some water and she couldn't get her head off her chest to drink it. Both of my girls have had a little trouble holding their heads up when they get high fevers, but never like this. Their walking has never been compromised, nor has it lasted this long or been this extreme. I started freaking out when she could barely walk.
I called the doctor who told me to take her to Denton Presby ER immediately. Erik was in his College Algebra final when all this was going on, so I dropped Londyn off at a friend's house and took her in. It alarmed me at how fast they got her in and how fast the doctor came in to see her. I kinda thought they would send us home and say to watch her, but I was seriously wrong. The only thing they ever mentioned being the problem was meningitis, which immediately had me panicking. They wanted to do a spinal tap right then and there and then transfer her to Cook Children's in Ft. Worth, by ambulance. I coudn't believe all this was going on and I was trying to coordinate when Londyn would go and how Erik would get up there. We were lucky to have so many friends from church off to take Londyn, but my mom came to the rescue in getting Erik to the hospital and took Londyn home with her.
In the ER:
After getting her IV started and checking her vitals, they did the spinal tap, which was the by far, most horrible thing I've ever seen happen to my kids. They made her sit up and it took me and three other nurses to hold her down while they put the needle in her spine. It was horrible. Because she couldn't hold her head up, her oxygen levels dropped really fast, which resulted in me yelling at the nurses that she couldn't breathe, while bawling my eyes out. Because she's so strong, it took forever for them to draw all the samples they needed.
By the time they were done, she was exhausted and laid out all limp on the bed and I had to hold oxygen up to her nose to help get her levels back up. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. Erik walked in right after and I knew he was there before I saw him because all I could hear was sobbing behind me. It was a terrible sight to walk in on.
They packed Scotlyn and me into an ambulance and took us to Cook Children's, while Erik followed in the car. She just laid there and looked around the whole time-totally un-Scotlyn like. When we got there, they decided she needed an MRI to make sure she didn't have anything like brain tumors or anything horrible. Luckily, all those came back clear and they were going to keep her until she improved. No one had seen this before and it had everyone concerned there too.
Erik and I had two finals between us and I had a project presentation due the next day, so while she was in the MRI, I was finishing my project, while Erik studied. Talk about bad timing.
They finally got us up to her room at around 3am and we met the doctor (who happened to look EXACTLY like Erik's sister) and she tried putting all the pieces together before we finally got to sleep.
Wednesday morning, she woke up and was still very clingy, but she seemed like she had a little more strength. We were very optimistic and thought it was just a freak thing. We both took turns leaving to take finals and she stayed attached to one of us all day. Erik kept trying to get up and put her back in her crib when she was asleep and Scotlyn would go, "Daddy, sit down!". She wasn't letting us out of her site. At this point, they called off Neurology and thought she would be able to go home on Thursday.
Waking up for a few seconds to eat:
Falling asleep while eating:
At that point, we decided we needed to get someone there to help Erik give a blessing. Our awesome friends, the Mabes, drove the hour out to Ft. Worth to help Erik and we immediately felt peace and knew she was going to be okay. She woke up for one more hour that day-when my mom brought Londyn up and they brought Scotlyn some ice cream. She wouldn't eat anything else and only had a few bites of ice cream before she fell asleep again.
She slept all the way until 8am Friday morning. So she was basically asleep for 36 hours, with the exception of 2 hours on Thursday. It apparently paid off because she woke up acting so much better. She was a lot like she had been on Monday, but we were glad to have her like that. Her fever had gone away and she was taken off of contact isolation and IV fluids that night, allowing us to show her around the hospital (it's a super cool hospital).
By Saturday, she was completely back to Scotlyn. That morning, she was bouncing around the room, playing with toys, climbing on chairs and being fiesty Scotlyn again. We were so glad to have her back. The nurses and doctor were all surprised to see how much personality she had after watching her sleep for 5 days. We couldn't wait to get out of the hospital!
She ate a big breakfast:
Took some more pictures to show off how good she was doing:
And climbed on top of everything in the room:
In the end, they decided what it was, was probably Roseola like they originally thought, but it combined with Ataxia (dizziness, lack of strength in the neck, and lethargic). Ataxia normally doesn't appear until a couple weeks after the initial sickness, if it happens at all. So the combination of them both made it a lot harder on her.
That was by far, the scariest couple of days mine and Erik's lives. We hope we never have to have another kid endure that or worse. We grew an even deeper respect for parents with kids who have cancer or other long term illnesses because it was emotionally draining and unbelievably stressful. Scotlyn bounced back super quick, but had headaches from her spinal tap for another week. Her and Londyn took a couple of days to readjust to each other and being home again, but if those are the worst problems that came out of this, we really consider ourselves lucky.
We're so grateful for all the help from our friends and family through all of this and it really made us realize how blessed we are to be surrounded by so many people that care about our little family. We'll never forget it.
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