Beckham's stay at Primary Children's

This poor picture makes me so sad for little Beckham. Although all the wires and cords hooked up to him make him look a lot more serious than he was.

On August 29, I went to feed Beckham in the middle of the night, and the minute I picked him up, I knew he had a fever. He was so hot. So I took his temp, and it was 100.3. He was exactly 6 weeks old at the time, and I've been told that a baby under 3 months with a fever will have to go directly to the hospital. I didn't want to take him in the middle of the night, and decided that since he was not fussing, and he was eating fine, that I would give him half a dose of Tylenol, and let him sleep, and that I would call the Dr in the morning.

So when I called the doctors office Monday morning, and they indeed told me to take him directly to the hospital. By now he had a fever of 100.7.

They admitted us and began the poking. I had done this with Bailee when she had a fever, cough, and runny nose at 6 weeks, so I knew what to expect. They have to take samples of urine, blood, and spinal fluid to find out what is causing the fever. And their little bodies are too young to fight anything off on their own.

They determined he had "Meningitis" which is an infection of the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. If that infection is bacterial, it can cause all kinds of problems like loss of hearing, vision, brain damage, or even death. It would have to be treated with antibiotics for 3-4 weeks. If the infection is viral, it just has to run it's course. It's less serious if it's viral, obviously.

Well, it takes a while for them to watch the samples, to see if bacteria grows in them. They immediately start treating it as if it's bacterial, and pumping him full of antibiotics via IV, which was in his head at first, then moved to his hand.

We spent Monday night there. On Tuesday, they had one of the samples come back positive for "Enterovirus", which is a common virus. So since they knew it wasn't bacterial, we were able to go home Tuesday afternoon. We were told to just give him Tylenol for the fever if it keeps coming back. But it never did.

I love the staff at Primary Children's. They were so helpful, knowledgeable, and kind. I'm so glad it wasn't something more serious, and that we didn't have to stay too long in the hospital.