Emalyn's Hospital Stay

November 10th is when everything went down hill really. Emalyn started to get a fever that kept going up and down along with the chills. Her temperature got to 103.5 and we decided to take her to the emergency room. According to the dumbass doctor who saw her, we didn't need to bring her in until her temp was 105/106 since she had no other symptoms. Um, what? We were shortly released and were told to continue with the Tylenol. Her fever went up and down until Monday.

Tuesday she went to school and was just fine, the fever was gone. When she got home that day, she complained of her head hurting, and again on Wednesday so both days she received Tylenol and was good after that.

Thursday and Friday she seemed good. She was her normal talkative happy self. She had no complaints of a headache.

Saturday morning she started throwing up and could not keep nothing down. And I do mean nothing.

When Sunday [ 11/17 ] morning came I went into her room to check on her and she told me that her legs felt funny. I stood her up and she could not walk. She could not balance herself to even take a step without falling. She is six. Erik and I had thought maybe her legs were asleep or she had a cramp in them so we didn't think to much of it and we helped her down the stairs. She continued throwing up and still could not hold anything down. We finally said this is enough, we are taking her to the emergency room. She was given fluids, had blood drawn, did a urine test and had a cat scan done all to figure out why she could not walk. After receiving the fluids she quickly became her normal self, stopped throwing up but was still not able to walk and balance on her own. No one could figure out why. We were transferred to Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children later on that night. Since the doctors didn't know if it was contagious or not, Jonah had to leave. Erik stayed with Emalyn in the hospital and I took Jonah home.

Monday I went back up to the hospital since they ruled it out as being contagious. Emalyn started physical therapy and saw a neurologist. They did a MRI and that came back perfect. They did more blood work, that also came back normal. She did not have a fever, she was no longer throwing up and she did not have any pain… anywhere. The question still remains, why can she not walk on her own?

Tuesday her walking improved slightly but she still needed a lot of help. They told us it was called Acute Cerebellar Ataxia which is a disorder of the nervous system. It is marked by the sudden onset of disturbance in muscle coordination. The cerebellum is the part of the brain that controls balance and coordination. It does not function properly in the case of cerebellar ataxia.

Basically her being sick [ fever, chills, headaches and throwing up ] is what caused the part of the brain [ cerebellum ] to not function correctly. My first question was how long would this last? Their reply was days, weeks or even months. If it turns into months she will need to do another MRI and have a spinal tap done.

Late Tuesday night she was released from hospital. Until she can fully walk on her own and not fall, she has to stay out of school. She needs help walking every single time she wants to get up and walk. Its honestly been challenging but we are making it work. We were told to let her be a kid, let her walk, let her play just help her so she doesn't harm herself.

In a couple of weeks we will need to go back to the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children to check in with the neurologist and the physical therapist to see her progress and then we just go from there.

If this doesn't make sense to you, how do you think we feel? One day our six year old can walk on her own, then one morning she couldn't even stand on her own two feet without falling over and it's all from a fever, headaches and throwing up.

I really hope this goes away very soon so she won't have to do more tests. So far she hasn't been able to walk on her own for a full week. Wish us [ really her ] luck!