As you read in my last post, there has been a lot of sickness in the Spears family lately. First our 2 shunt revisions the first week of February, then the next week Karlie had the flu, then this past week Kinsley had the flu, then on Friday Karlie woke up with a bad bladder infection...I made the mistake of asking "What else can happen?"
Anderson was with his Aunt CaCa (Jamie's sister) since Kinsley had the flu and we didn't want him to get sick. She called me Friday before lunch and told me he was running a low fever, didn't sleep well the night before, and wouldn't take a bottle. Oh boy... here we go. I was afraid that he was coming down with the flu- even though we had gotten him out of the house and away from the girls both times. So we went to the Pediatrician's office, where we had just been on Thursday to get the stitches out from our last surgery. They did a flu swab, checked for RSV, and did some bloodwork. Everything was negative except the bloodwork showed a small possibility for a virus. Usually at this point they send you home, tell you it's a virus and if you get worse then come back. However, his head circumference had changed from 48cm to 50.5cm since the day before...and when you have a shunt, that changes everything.
So they put in a call to our neurosurgeon, who told them we needed to come to ER to be checked out. We hopped in the car, picked up Jamie from work, made sure the girls were okay with Jamie's dad, and off we went.
All I will say about Friday night at the ER is be glad that I didn't have a computer...it was the most frustrating and tiring 21 hours of my life. I think for now, I will play the Forrest Gump card and say "That's all I have to say about that!" :)
We eventually got to a room (where we still are). They don't have any idea what is going on. They don't think anything is wrong with the new(est) shunt, but aren't positive. His fever disappeared as soon as we got the hospital, and the feeding issues resolved themselves last night. We've had 2 IV's, been catheterized for urine, had an MRI, a CT scan, and a shunt series of xrays. Oh yes, and they also tapped the shunt.
What have all of these tests revealed? Well here are a few things we know now that we didn't know before Friday:
- The cyst has shrunk significantly in size since our surgery 2 weeks ago, and possibly has collapsed. In December the cyst measured 13cm in length- it is now down to 3.8cm.
- Now that the cyst is smaller, they are able to get a better view of how much brain tissue there is on the right side. Remember that when he was first born, they didn't think there was much, if any, brain tissue. We now know that there is brain tissue on the right side, but not quite all of it is there. There is some brain tissue on the top of his right hemisphere that is missing.
- The MRI labled him as having "dysgenesis" of the corpus callosum rather than "agenesis". Agenesis means it's not there at all, dysgenesis means it is there- but either not all there or malformed. The neurosurgeon said functionally they have the same results...I'm going to check more into this because every MRI in the past has said agenesis. It might not matter to him, but it does to me.
Two doctors came in this morning and told us we could go home now that he is eating and feeling better. Then about 2 hours later they came back and said they want us to stay another night so that our neurosurgeon can look at all of the test results and give us the okay to go home. I'm not sure what changed their minds, but we will wait until tomorrow and see if we find out anything else. Until then...
No comments:
Post a Comment