Stargazer, sorry, I realize that I never answered your question. My daughter did not have meningitis. She had chicken pox. She had had it when she was 10 months old, and when she was ten years old she broke out in a mild rash after being exposed to a child who had a rash from her varicella immunization. Because of these two earlier chicken pox episodes, the ED physician insisted that it was impossible for her to have chicken pox again despite having been heavily exposed to it by four young children in the past month.
I insisted that she do some blood work, and pointed out how swollen her spleen was. She did the blood work and came back saying that her platelets were low, and her white count was 2.4, so she did have a virus, but that 'the virus was likely caused from her being under stress because of her finals coming up in college' and told her that she was not contagious! I still can't get over the fact that she told her that a VIRUS wasn't contagious.
While my daughter was laying on the hospital bed in the ED, she broke out in approx another 200 pox during that 90 minute period. The nurse came in to give us our discharge instructions and part of it was "bring her back in if she gets very many more spots'. I actually laughed and said "Why bother? She has broken out in at least 100 to 200 more spots in the last 90 minutes and the doctor still doesn't think this is anything to worry about." (This outbreak stemmed from a 2-year-old getting shingles (she'd had chicken pox at 12 months), and both her 13-month-old brother and 2 week old brother ended up with chicken pox. My daughter was helping at their house extensively as she assumed she was safe from contracting chicken pox.)
Her own clinic couldn't get her in before two the next afternoon, and although they prescribed Acyclovir immediately, she had missed the 'magic' 24-hour window they like to start Acyclovir within. Her clinic wanted to keep her out of the hospital because of how contagious it was so they said they could provide outpatient support via their infusion room and since I am a nurse decided to see if we could get through it at home. Before the week was out she had chicken pox over most of her body, as well as on internal organs. She even coughed them up as they shed off of her lungs.
Anyway, I had no idea how horrible chicken pox could end up being. My young granddaughter ended up in intensive care with encephalitis after being exposed at our house. My own 21-year-old did not end up recovering quickly as we hoped she would. It affected her liver and spleen. It was later determined that she had likely also had mild encephalitis. She has had to go into the clinic for several repeat blood tests, and her physician advised it would likely take her all summer to recover fully, which has certainly proved true.
And we never did get the usual survey from the hospital, so my daughter did not have a chance to share her feelings about her experience with that particular physician.
