Hi all.
My wife, Jane, and I have just been through what must rank as the worst 10 days of our entire lives. But look what we got at the end of it!
Louis Benjamin Thorpe. Born 00:02 on 11/08/08 weighing 7lbs 15oz.
Unfortunately at 19:00 on the same day he was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care unit at Burton Queens Hospital with suspected Meningitis. As you can probably imagine at that point the entire world fell apart for both of us. One minute you're having a cuddle the next you're in an ambulance with the blue lights flashing.
The consultant at the NNU started treating him for Meningitis immediately as they simply don't have time to wait 48 hours for blood cultures to prove the diagnosis. The symptoms he presented were that he was convulsing and also incredibly irritable (the last one you could say is that he just takes after his dad).
He then went through about 2 dozen other tests including a brain scan all of which where clear, but he was still convulsing. With every convulsion would also come a desaturation of his blood oxygen levels, which was VERY scary! At this point the doctors started the first of 3 attempts to control this with drugs. It was the 3rd that did it in the end but he had now had so many injections/cannulas inserted in his hands/feet that they had to shave his head to insert one under his scalp.
The poor little thing looked terrible!
That was the end of Saturday. And with him now heavily sedated he was no longer convulsing. So it was simply a case of keeping him fed (via an NG tube), warm and stable until they could ween him off of the drugs and hopefully normalise him.
Thankfully all the tests were coming back negative but we were warned that we were now so far in, that if they did find the cause it would be very serious.
2 days later and they started to reduce his dosing and begin the process of normalising him.
Yesterday we came home. Still none the wiser as to how/what happened but so thankful that the people at the hospital acted so quickly and professionally.
We're now both absolutely paranoid that something else will go wrong and are watching his every single move for anything abnormal (but then, what is normal with a baby?). This will pass I'm sure and we both can't wait to start showing him off to friends and family.
(P.S. Monitor calibrator in the post TODAY).
My wife, Jane, and I have just been through what must rank as the worst 10 days of our entire lives. But look what we got at the end of it!
Louis Benjamin Thorpe. Born 00:02 on 11/08/08 weighing 7lbs 15oz.
Unfortunately at 19:00 on the same day he was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care unit at Burton Queens Hospital with suspected Meningitis. As you can probably imagine at that point the entire world fell apart for both of us. One minute you're having a cuddle the next you're in an ambulance with the blue lights flashing.
The consultant at the NNU started treating him for Meningitis immediately as they simply don't have time to wait 48 hours for blood cultures to prove the diagnosis. The symptoms he presented were that he was convulsing and also incredibly irritable (the last one you could say is that he just takes after his dad).
He then went through about 2 dozen other tests including a brain scan all of which where clear, but he was still convulsing. With every convulsion would also come a desaturation of his blood oxygen levels, which was VERY scary! At this point the doctors started the first of 3 attempts to control this with drugs. It was the 3rd that did it in the end but he had now had so many injections/cannulas inserted in his hands/feet that they had to shave his head to insert one under his scalp.
The poor little thing looked terrible!
That was the end of Saturday. And with him now heavily sedated he was no longer convulsing. So it was simply a case of keeping him fed (via an NG tube), warm and stable until they could ween him off of the drugs and hopefully normalise him.
Thankfully all the tests were coming back negative but we were warned that we were now so far in, that if they did find the cause it would be very serious.
2 days later and they started to reduce his dosing and begin the process of normalising him.
Yesterday we came home. Still none the wiser as to how/what happened but so thankful that the people at the hospital acted so quickly and professionally.
We're now both absolutely paranoid that something else will go wrong and are watching his every single move for anything abnormal (but then, what is normal with a baby?). This will pass I'm sure and we both can't wait to start showing him off to friends and family.
(P.S. Monitor calibrator in the post TODAY).
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So sorry to hear what you have been through, really hope everything will be ok! x x x x x x x x x
)
