Daley Ponderings

Based on an excruciating headache Wednesday afternoon, October 12, that did not go away, Jon and I headed to West Penn Hospital Emergency Room at 10:30pm. A friend came to the house to watch Jonathan while he slept. Here is an aside - it was so good for Jonathan that he did not come, he would have been tired and cranky and I would have not had any resources left to support Jon.
After waiting an hour in the ER (this is also an abbreviated post, many more details can be found in my diary and someday I might type it all up...) they called him in, asked him questions, and decided he probably had meningitis. (Symptoms: extreme headache, extreme sensitivity to light, fever, stiff neck.)

THey did a spinal tap which was a most horrible procedure, but they let me stay in to support him, which was nice. Inital results were, yes, definitely meningitis, pretty sure viral, but can't rule out bacterial until the cultures come back in 24 hours.

THey admitted him to the hospital at 6am. He got all sorts of drugs through his IV line - pain med, anti-nausea med, antibiotics, steroids. They had to treat him as if he had bacterial, which involved masks and an isolated room.

The Kuhnses came to our house for all of Thursday and played with Jonathan while I went back and forth to the hospital. Our dsl was broken, so we checked email by dialup at the hospital. I also read to Jon from Winter Holiday, which is the fourth book in the Swallows and Amazons series.

In the evening after they Kuhns left, I was suddenly hit by my exhaustion, mostly emotional. It was really hard to have my husband in the hospital.

We thought checkout was at 11am, but found out Friday morning that it was not until 4pm. So I called Jackie W from church and she came to watch Jonathan for a couple of hours while I went to the hospital. While I was there, they said he could leave - cultures were negative and Jon could come home! What a joyful relief to walk home with him. He had a lot more recovery to go, but just being home was a million times better.

All throughout this, Jonathan was a trooper. I tried to spend my home time with him as much as possible. He really grew in his ability to play by himself. The only concern that presented himself was a fear of "lion get you." The first couple of days, he would run up to me and try to climb up, truly afraid of a lion (or giraffe) that was going to get him. As per Grandma's suggestion, I played it up, turning it into his advantage (you turn around and get the lion) and eventually over the next few days, the game had morphed and was less frequent. At some point the lion and giraffe went swimming together and that was the end of it. Now when he says "lion get you" he has a smile on his face and it is a game again.

We went to Lancaster, PA with some friends for a mini-conference that weekend, and the effort (especially the car ride) was more than Jon was expecting, and he spent a lot of it in the hotel bed.

He took the whole next week off work, but by Thursday and Friday was actually doing a full day's work on the laptop in our bed. He has made much improvement, but the doctor says he won't be 100% until about mid-November.