The Kleinlein Family

Thursday started well. Meghan is taking a lunch break from all her different therapies.......and enjoying one of Mom's delicious vegetable/fruit juices. (No comment from the peanut gallery). But she had been struggling with a headache for most of the day. MGH really wants to taper her off the steroids, so they proposed a 50% tapering schedule each day. My gut intinct told me that this was too fast and I contemplated speaking up but my strong desire to get her off these awful drugs overrode my intuition--a decision that I would come to regret

By 6pm Meghan spiked a fever of 104 degrees. She was taken by ambulance back to MGH where we were in the ER until 5am, running every test possible. They even convinced me to allow them to attempt to pull brain fluid out through her resevoir from the third ventricle. After 5 failed attempts with a needle in her skull, I asked them to stop. Obviously the third ventricular ventriculostomy which was done in Buffalo, was a success, as there was no accessible fluid in the resevoir.

We were taken to a room where Meghan was isolated. She was required to wear a mask in the corridors of the hospital--at least Puddy was gracious enough to wear a mask with her! She also has a stiff neck, which is adding to the concern because these signs could suggest bacterial menengitis in the brain. So now we wait for cultures to grow so that they can identity if specific bacteria are causing this unpleasant little trio. The doctors are pushing to do a spinal tap (the only way to detect menengitis) but Stephan and I want to wait a little longer to see if any of the 3 symptoms break. My gut tells me that this is viral, but only time will tell on that one! Yet if we stay here too long, we will lose our bed in the rehab hospital.

So we have updated our Prayer Request. The eyes were important but now there's something more worrying.