15. We’re not having an emergency shunt surgery today
June 16 2014
Thank goodness.
I realize that’s an alarming headline so let me tell you a little bit about it.
Since Otto’s been home from Seattle Children’s he’s not totally been himself. He’s had a low grade fever and a runny nose. I’d consider it his second “official” sick.
The first time being when we had to be in the ICU for a week or so.
Otto’s goes big. :) More accurately, Otto is good at scaring the bejesus out of his parents.
When we were discharged they gave us a list of things that should they manifest in Otto, we should reach out to the on-call nurse for evaluation. Lethargy and vomiting were both on that list (among other things).
Otto woke up this morning and something was amiss. He just didn’t really move out of his blankets and just kinda laid there.
About an hour later when he had two massive vomiting episodes- these weren’t spit-ups, they were full-on stomach ick type sicks all over his grandma- I started to get scared.
We’re on alert in general with all things having to do with his head. He’s one week post-op, he’s got hydrocephalus, the ventricles in his brain are larger than they should be and appear to be growing larger. To distill it down, our concerns are 1) is there an infection from the surgery (meningitis) and/or 2) do we need to intervene and place a permanent shunt in his head.
We love our pediatrician. Dr. Label at Pediactric Associates. She is absolutely marvelous. So when Otto got sick first I called the on-call neuro nurse. She said let’s see how the next couple hours go. Then I was able to get an appointment with Dr. Label for 9:10am. She works at Children’s Hospital some days so she’s able to get into the system there and review charts and whatnot. She’s also able to quickly contact our doctors we see there and help coordinate our care. We’re very fortunate. She saw us, didn’t feel super comfortable and organized for us to go straight to Children’s and see Neuro and have a haste MRI to see if there is something of concern going on inside Otto’s brain.
We were told to please hold off on feeding Otto again. This translates to, you may need to go into surgery. Scary stuff.
Long story short- his imaging looks exactly the same since the week before surgery. Meaning- the fluid levels are okay-, his ventricles are the same size and we have a good amount of fluid between his brain and his skull (the pressure is good). They suspect that that his soft spot is bulging due to his fever which has been present this whole time in spite of being on a regimen of Tylenol for post surgery pain every 4 hours.
They felt strongly that there wasn’t a need to do a spinal tap to test the fluid to rule out an infection (meningitis).
It was reassuring that they told me at Children’s that we did the right thing by being concerned, calling up our doc and bringing him in.
The mystery- why does he have his fever and why did he throw up? We don’t know. I know that he and I both came back from our stay at the hospital with a bug. Dr. Label called at the end of the day to check in and as the game plan goes if he continues to have a fever on Wednesday we’ll bring him in and she’ll check to see if he’s got an infection from the catheter he had during surgery. That’s her next guess.
He’s in better spirits this afternoon. He’s acting more like himself now. He hasn’t thrown up since this morning. He’s still got a low grade fever and his soft spot is bulging.
His mom and dad are just about ready to collapse but we’ll all get through it. The uncertainty really takes its tole. I look like I’ve been through the ringer. I am exhausted. It is a total, absolute bummer to have to spend your PTO in stress. I need a vacation from this “vacation”.
xoxox
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Here is a little video of the babe staying to crawl! Spoiler..he doesn’t get the ball.
http://youtu.be/rbpSCBSnNXY