Spinal Meningitis??? What!!!!

After having a fever for a whole week and it not going away with strong doses of antibiotics, the pediatrician thought it would be best if we got a spinal tap done to rule out spinal meningitis. I took Malia to the ER Friday morning and 5hrs later the doctor was telling me that Malia tested positive for spinal meningitis. Here is where it gets complicated. There are 2 types of Meningitis, viral and bacterial. Viral you just let it run it's course, it can make you pretty sick with flu like symptoms but it usually goes away after 5 days. Bacterial can be very dangerous and needs to be taken seriously with a long regimen of antibiotics. Malia's test came back indicating that she most likely had viral spinal meningitis but since she had been on strong doses of antibiotics all week for her ear infection they were not sure if the antibiotics were in deed actually treating the bacterial meningitis making it look like viral. (ughh, i told you it was complicated) So, at this point they had not choice but to admit Malia to the hospital and treat her as if she had bacterial spinal meningitis until her blood work indicated otherwise. We were told that it would take at least 48hrs if not longer for her blood work to come back indicating any viral type infection and she'd need to stay in the hospital until the results came back. By Tuesday, we still didn't have a definite answer to whether it was viral or bacterial so they assumed it was bacterial and treated it as such. Malia was thankfully doing much better and hadn't had a fever since we admitted her on that Friday. She was able to be discharged Tuesday with a home health nurse coming in to give her antibiotics over the next 5 days.

When we think about "what could have happened" we are extremely thankful that Malia pulled through this very serious illness in the fighter type manner that she's pulled through everything so far. She is one tough cookie! A big Thank You to Harley's step-mom who came out for 6 days to play nanny/mom to Kayla and Lydia. She was a huge help and it was a huge relief to have her here so I could be at the hospital with Malia. I, of course, can not fully comprehend God's plan for Malia's little life but I can only think it will be something truly and utterly amazing! To be so small and to have already endured so much but yet have so much still to overcome, she's absolutely amazing. Thanks once again for all your prayers. I truely believe this girl "fights" through every situation because of the many people praying for her.