At Least We Have Our Health......

Oh, wait.

Ah, where to begin....Last weekend started out quite promising. I had plans to go visit one of my best friends, Tiffany, on Saturday so we could meet each other's babies (her daughter, Lily, was born 2 months before Bryn).

When we got Bryn up (or she got us up) on Saturday morning, she had a little mucus in her eye that I just wiped away. Dale pointed out that her eye looked a little red in the corner, but I said it was just from me wiping it a second ago and I believe said to Dale, "you're just being paranoid", and I was off on my way to Melbourne.

Bryn slept almost the entire way to Melbourne, a little over an hour's ride. Thinking back, this should have told me something, considering she HATES the car. So, we get to Tiffany's and I notice the mucus has built back up in her eye. I thought she might be getting a cold (I had let Tiffany know of Bryn's mucus before coming over and she said she wasn't worried about it, i.e. getting her kids sick).

While at Tiffany's, I notice Bryn's eye is actually getting redder and producing a lot more mucus. Tiffany said it looks like conjunctivitus, which her older daughter just had. It didn't look like much of anything at the time. The swelling really wasn't bad yet. Although I agreed with Tiffany, and feeling kind of silly, I decided to call Dale and ask him to call the pediatrician, just to be safe. We're first-time parents and although I don't freak about everything, it's still nice to get a professional's opinion on some stuff, especially with all the medical drama we've been going through. Dale said the pediatrician told us to come in at noon. Thank God they're open until noon on Saturdays!

We get to the pediatrician and get in to see the doctor (not ours, a partner of the practice) at about 1 pm or so. By this time, Bryn's eye was getting more and more red and swollen. We're still thinking we'll just get an ointment or antibiotics and be sent on our way. The next thing I know, we're being told that Bryn needs to be admitted to the hospital and she's calling to set it up right now. The doctor said that it looks like the "Hib virus/disease" and this is very dangerous, possibly leading to loss of eyesight, etc. Bryn just had her vaccines, including the Hib Vaccine, 11 days ago, shouldn't this have been covered? We were told the vaccine may have not had a chance to be effective yet, or she might have become infected before the vaccine, etc.

We immediately go to Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital to be admitted. Dale dropped me off and ran home to get supplies for our stay. It worked out perfectly as I registered Bryn and about 2 minutes after actually getting to our room, Dale came back.

We saw the first doctor, Dr. Schulze, upon our arrival. She was probably about my age, maybe a little older (her age actually does have some relevance - keep reading). She said Bryn's eye looked a lot like a blocked tear duct, but also an infection, and started her on IV antibiotics. Now, I had just gone through the hell that is seeing Miss Brynnie get her shots, and I let Daddy be the point man on staying with her while they put the IV in. There's only so much you can take.

Brynnie was wonderful while they put the IV in. She was the perfect patient. Actually, she never ran a fever or even acted sick, aside from a few crying spurts, but even those were maybe a handful of times.

After her first dose of antibiotics, Bryn's eye swelled up even more, if that was even possible. This scared the hell out of us even more, if that was even possible. This lead the doctor to believe this was definitely an infection as the medication went straight to her eye (the infection) and "attacked" it. Because the swelling got so much worse, the doctor ordered a CAT scan (or, as Lauren said, "if it's for a baby, it's a kitten scan) for Bryn's eye to make sure the infection wasn't behind her eye.

By the next morning, her eye was already much much better. The swelling had drastically decreased and the mucus was almost nonexistent. When we first got to the hospital, they had taken blood and gotten a sample of her eye mucus for a culture. Our worst fears were that Dale and/or I had infected Bryn from my numerous infections. We are so careful, to the point of bleeding hands from excessive washing, that this would just be devastating. How would we be able to care for her? There was literally no way we could be any more careful.

We got the results back from the CAT scan and everything was normal. Again, thank God. Her blood work looked okay too and the 24 hour results from the culture were showing that it most likely wasn't strep or staph (which is what it would have been had she gotten sick from my infections).

By the third day, the swelling was gone and so was the mucus. Miss Brynnie just had red all over her eye due to hemorrhages from the infection. We also met with the head staff doctor (a long lost brother of Pete's - we swear), who we just loved. He said Bryn looked great, which she did.

I had taken pictures of Bryn at various times at the hospital to document her eye and send updates. Thank goodness I did, as these pictures were extremely helpful to the doctors that had not seen her when at her worst. He asked if we minded participating in rounds (you know, like Grey's Anatomy), which we didn't. He also said most likely we'd be discharged and sent home with the oral version of the two types of antibiotics Bryn had been on via IV and once we got the final culture back, we'd cut out the unneeded antibiotics.

By the time rounds came by, the culture had come in and sure enough, it was the Hib Virus, or "H Flu". Now, this is where the age of the doctor comes in handy. When we first went to our pediatrician's office, the doctor we saw said she was concerned because of the color of Bryn's eye and that it looked like the Hib Virus. The chance of contracting the Hib Virus is so small now because this is one of the vaccines that children routinely get. The only reason our doctor was so concerned was that she had been in practice long enough to have seen many cases of the Hib Virus as the vaccine has only been standard for 15-18 years. Had we not seen this doctor, we most likely would have been sent home with a topical gel for her eye. The doctor we first saw in the hospital didn't mention the Hib virus either, presumably because she had not had experience with it as the doctor at our pediatrician's had. We were told H Flu/Hib is extremely, extremely dangerous by our pediatrician, but I prefer not to look it up to see exactly what could have happened had we not taken Bryn to the hospital.

Through all the medical problems we've experienced, our saving grace through this all, as I've posted and said numerous times, has been that at least Bryn is perfect and healthy. Her getting sick was devastating.

When we called everyone to tell them that she was going into the hospital, we got a resounding "Are you kidding me? Haven't you guys been through enough?!!!!" I don't think anyone would blame us for taking the attitude of "why does this keep happening to us?" Instead, we're trying to look at the past 11 weeks as "We've been through all this and still managed to come out of it okay". I think that's the only way we can look at it now.

For me, I have my little Brynnie taking a nap right next to me as I post this and my Dale napping down the hall. For those two reasons, I am one grateful lady.



How sad is that? It was impossible to look at her without tearing up. She didn't seem to mind it, though.




There is no ointment on her eye. This is all mucus that was coming out of her eye. She went from nothing at all, to this in less than 24 hours. Scary.




Here's Bryn sleeping in her hospital crib. As Jeni said, "she looks so peaceful, you know except for the block of wood attached to her arm".




Here is Miss Brynnie on Friday night, just hanging out. Little did we know we'd be in the hospital in less than 24 hours. Look at her eyes - perfectly normal.




Brynnie asleep. I swear, these cribs look more like cribs for babies in jail. If you'll look to the right, you'll see the edge of our twin size, fold-up cot. Dale and I slept there, together, each night. Honestly, the mattress had the consistency of a half-inflated air mattress, the frame shifted violently whenever you'd get on or off it, and it sagged in the middle, but man I still slept pretty great on it.