Well, at least it's not that...

I promised pictures...and I deliver on my promises.

It's not a lot of pictures, but pictures nonetheless.

We’re still waiting for the full results of Will’s spinal tap. We have, however, been able to conclusively rule out Bieber fever. Baby, baby, baby, I can’t tell you how relieved we were to get this news.

Will’s lab work should be in by Friday. That will give us some good info about what kind of infection we’re dealing with. He has meningitis. Broadly speaking this is an inflammation of the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord. The two main types of meningitis are bacterial and viral. Of the two, viral is much better than bacterial. Most of the bad things you’ve heard about meningitis come from bacterial forms of it. Whatever the form, though, it has been addressed early. He’s getting antibiotics and has been for several days. He’s also getting an antiviral medicine in case it is a certain form of virus. If it is an enterovirus the course of treatment is to let it run its course. We don’t know for sure which type Will has, but so far everything is pointing to a viral meningitis from an enterovirus. This would be consistent with the bug Kim has been struggling with all week. Will’s platelet level is up. His weight is up. He seems more energetic and alert. All these seem to point to Will being on the upswing of this meningitis. The doctors have been very reassuring to me. They haven’t seemed frazzled by the meningitis, so I’ve managed to remain calm. I have been so impressed by our nurses and doctors. I’m deeply thankful that when I was loafing through Biology 110, at least someone understood what was going on. I’ll stick with parsing Greek and Hebrew verbs.

Please continue to pray. We are receiving great care. As soon as the neonatalogist gets the lab results he’ll consult with a pediatric infectious disease specialists. Then we should find out what the next few days are going to look like. Until then we wait and I exercise the mental discipline of not thinking about worse case scenarios.

Now, concerning little William’s lungs. It seems that things are on the upswing. His breathing is stabilizing. His respiratory rate is down. He’s been able to feed off a bottle. The major hang up on this front goes back to the meningitis. The infection has sapped his energy and Will just doesn’t have the strength to feed from the bottle. As he develops strength he’ll develop coordination and be able to eat more from the bottle and then to nurse. Sometimes he just forgets to breathe while eating. I can relate, I’ve gotten that way at the Golden Corral.