Here is something beneficial to those of you not in the know – Rosie is in the infectious diseases ward at the hospital suffering from a case of meningococcal infection.
There are two types of meningococcal infection – meningitis and septicaemia. Rosie had septicaemia. Or rather, she HAS septicaemia. She’s still pretty sick. Septicaemia is when the meningococcal bacteria infect the bloodstream, and travel all around the body causing the immune system to react with a scary-looking dark red rash.
Rosie was taken to the Emergency Department of the RBWH on Thursday afternoon, about 2:00pm, by her housemate, Jenna. We are all lucky that Jenna was home that day, as she was supposed to be out with her mother, but she slept in and so didn’t end up going out. Rosie had been sick from the early hours of the morning, with vomiting and fever. Rosie had told Jenna she didn’t want to go to the hospital, but by the afternoon Jenna insisted. When she saw the rash on the side of Rosie’s abdomen, she was even more adamant.
By the time Rosie was in the Emergency Room, and being seen by doctors, her temperature was extremely high, her blood pressure extremely low, and she was delirious. I, meanwhile, had been told by Lauren that Jenna was taking Rosie to hospital. Lauren was at work and unable to go anywhere – she was waiting for her boss (and father-in-law) to get back, and for her mother-in-law to get there so she could get a lift over to the hospital. I was at home cooking – Tim’s brother, Matt, was coming over for dinner that night. As soon as I heard about Rosie’s symptoms, part of my mind brought up all the fractured knowledge I had of meningococcal – which wasn’t much. I called a taxi straight away, however, the taxi I ordered never showed, despite assurances from the taxi call-centre that he was “on his way, just five k’s away”. Apparently he wasn’t, because half an hour later, they were sending a new cab my way, with me now in tears at my inability to do anything get over to the hospital any faster. A drivers licence would have been really useful.
I managed to get to the hospital by about 3:30pm. I was told by the triage admin person that Rosie was still waiting in the corridor, and had yet to be seen. I was more than a bit agitated by this news, but it seemed the admin person didn’t know what they were talking about – the minute the doctor had seen Rosie, and had seen the rash, they were treating it as if it were meningococcal, which is the safest course of action. The admin person told me to sit down and wait, and someone would be out to see me soon.
One of the E.R. doctors came out to get me, and once we were in the corridor of the Emergency Room and out of the waiting area, she turned to me and very gravely advised that they suspected Rosie had meningococcal disease. This was the first point at which I had heard any professional opinion on Rosie’s situation. Up until then, I had been hoping that my lack of knowledge of all other possibilities would see my theoretical diagnosis of meningococcal as an over-the-top paranoid presumption. Having my fears confirmed made everything seem that much worse. Images of random nightmares I’d had over the years, where Rosie was hurt, kidnapped, trapped etc, and I was unable to do anything to help her, flashed into my mind. Some of these I had forgotten about. I also remembered I had shared a drink with Rosie the day before, when we had been to a movie together at Garden City. I asked the doctor if that would put me at risk. Not too much, apparently. Still, when I was finally allowed behind the curtain secluding Rosie from the rest of the Emergency Room, I was the only one not wearing a mask (they figured I’d already been exposed to the bacteria, if that was what it was).
When they let me in to see Rosie, I felt prickly hot & cold, seeing her laying in the bed fidgeting and moaning in pain. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she stared at me blankly with glassy eyes. She looked confused and angry. As the blood pressure cuff on her arm started to inflate to measure the faint pressure of blood being pumped from her heart, she became agitated and started to shout at the doctors and nurses around her. “Take it off! Get it off me! I can’t have this on! Get it off!”
I sat quietly beside her, not sure of what to say to calm her, wanting to comfort her and make her feel better, help her feel not so scared, not so angry, not in so much pain. I smoothed the hair back from her forehead, and she told me angrily to stop. I held her hand, at the nurses request, so that she didn’t bend the arm that had a drip in it. She didn’t take her hand from mine, except to swipe at the blood pressure cuff as it inflated again. The doctors and nurses asked her questions, to test how aware she was, how conscious of her surroundings:
“What day is it today, Rosie-anna?” (I’m surprised she answered them at all, considering the amount of times they stuffed up her name). Rosie answered, “Friday.” I wasn’t sure if this was right, because I wasn’t sure what day it was either.
“Who is this sitting beside you, Rosie-anna?” asked a nurse called Palla. Rosie turned and looked at me, and turned back to Palla and mumbled, “my sister”.
“And what’s her name?”
“Cassie.”
“And is she older or younger than you?”
“Older.”
“By how many years?”
“Five.”
The nurse turned to me to confirm this was correct. I nodded, and she smiled. I was relieved that Rosie was still mostly aware of what was happening around her. She knew where she was, after the doctors had told her, she answered each question of, “Do you know where you are, Rosie-anna?” with a quiet and impatient, “RBH”. This was a good sign. Many meningococcal patients fall into comas, and this can lead to brain damage and all sorts of other problems.
The nurses told me Rosie was going to have a catheter put in, to enable them to monitor everything happening in her body. They ushered me out of the room, and I stood in the corridor, against a wall, feeling numb. Various medical staff approached and questioned me on any allergies Rosie might have, has she been overseas recently, has she been around anyone else sick, is she a smoker, does she use drugs, could she have injected herself with anything recently… I was overwhelmed with everything, and so answered the questions slowly, most of the time with a useless, “I don’t know… I’m not sure… maybe?” I was terrified this information meant the difference between life and death, and I couldn’t be any help at all.
Sometime between when I arrived, and when Rosie had the catheter put in (I can’t recall events in sequence), Tim arrived, and some time after Tim, Lauren and Nathan arrived. We were shown to a family room by a brusque nurse, and told that we would be collected by someone when we were able to go back into the curtain room to see Rosie again.
To Be Continued…
