Anna is much better

Anna is in bed, comfortable and fairly settled. She is still waking for either a drink or to be sick but nothing out of the ordinary. Observations (obs) are back to 4 hourly. She seems to have come through this latest crisis.

After the terrifying events of Saturday night, she was unbelieveably clear and articulate with the neurology consultant on Sunday morning. He was expecting to see a confused and disorientated young girl, unable to recognise her own mother and not responding to external stimulation. Instead, Anna was grumpy, clearly not willing to speak to him and treating him with disdain when he asked her (apparently) stupid questions about the colour of her cup. He must have wondered why he was called out! Although her temperature was still high, all other clinical signs were good and so it was decided to wait until today for her MRI and lumbar puncture.

She had to fast from 3am this morning and was finally taken for her MRI at 12.30 pm. Since she was going under a general anaesthetic, we had a list of other procedures added in, just because it is easier to get them done while she is asleep – changing the gripper in her port a cath (involves ‘plugging’ a needle into the disc under her skin), removing and replacing her ng tube in her nostril and doing a lumbar puncture. She was sleepy but fine afterwards, wanting crisps and milk.

Bloods have been taken, samples tested for everything, she has been examined and discussed but nothing is showing up as the cause of this episode. The MRI scan show nothing unusual. The most likely cause seems to be a viral infection but it may well be that we don’t ever find out what really happened.

All the weekday staff were coming back in this morning and hearing about it so we had lots of people asking how we were. It seems almost unreal that she can have been so unwell and yet recovered so quickly.

We have no idea when Anna might be discharged. Its only possible to manage being in here and having some kind of normal(!) family life because of all your help – looking after Nathan when I’m in the hospital, looking after Anna when I need to be with Nathan, and constant messages of support. Thank you to everyone helping with this – you are all doing an amazing job.

We are also still in partial isolation because of her rsv. But we are through the worst of it. All prayers were answered. We are truly grateful.

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