That is the story of the Stewarts' lives. Just when I was telling everyone who asked that Archie is doing good, working , life is getting back to normal. The wheels fly off.
Thursday morning Archie developed a headache and it got increasing worse throughout the day so about 3 pm he sent me a text that he had a headache and was heading home. I told him to try to take a nap and take some Tylenol. Well when I got home from work he was in intense pain with no relief so he called the Infectious Disease doctor to find out his thoughts on the situation. We ate dinner and started packing for the hospital and after a little while the doctor called back and told us to head to Baylor. Archie told him he had a huge headache and neck pain and the doctor told him to get a lumbar puncture because he might have meningitis.
On the way to the hospital on the tollway I was driving when I saw people ahead of me start slamming on their brakes. I slammed on my brakes and thought I was going to rear end the car in front of me by was able to find an opening between cars to give me space to stop. Thankfully we were fine but as we started driving and on our right in the median it looked like a car had flipped a couple of times because there was debris in the right lane, the windshield was destroyed and the side airbags were deployed. Archie tried to call 911 but was put on hold while he had to wait for an operator. I could not stop my heart from pounding because I thought we were going to be part of the accident. I am thankful we were fine and pray that no one was hurt.
When we got to the ER we had to wait in the waiting room for an hour, you would think we would have some type of platinum status at Baylor by now where we could skip the line but no such luck. Archie started feeling pretty bad in the waiting room. We spent the night in the ER and he had all sorts of testing, lumbar punctures, the works I tell you. I didn't go to the house to sleep because he started randomly throwing up. They did give him a "cocktail" to help with the pain which was morphine, Benadryl and anti-nausea which made him act drunk because he was slurring his words, talking the nurses ears off and then after a while knocked him out so he got quite a bit of sleep this
morning. They did diagnose him with meningitis,we are still waiting to find out if it was viral or
bacterial. He got admitted and is now on the floor. The neurosurgeon came by and we discussed his
concerns which were the catheter in his brain and the need for another shunt. In his judgement he
thinks we should surgically remove the catheter since Archie's body seems to not like foreign objects
in it which cause infections. So most likely Tuesday Archie will have a craniotomy and
microscopically remove the catheter. In regards to the shunt we will wait and see.
So please pray for Archie on Tuesday that the surgery goes well and that he has a speedy recovery.
He will most likely be in the hospital until surgery day because the infectious disease doctor will
want to keep an eye on him. We should know more tomorrow when we see him.
Thank you to Sloan for letting me stay with her throughout the many hospital trips, it saves me so much time and gas money to be able to stay in Dallas. The 45 minute drive one way would have killed me if I had to do that daily. I told her that I am the annoying roommate who you just can't get rid of.
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