Carly Goes Bananas

Carly continues to do well as we get ready to start her developmental therapy tomorrow. There has been one possibly major improvement over the last few days related to her sodium control. Since the surgery Carly has not produced enough of the hormone ADH which the brain sends to the kidneys when it is time to stop peeing. Without this hormone the body continues to pee and can quickly become dehydrated to a very serious level. We have been administering daily shots of DDAVP to compensate for this hormone in addition to closely monitoring all of her inputs and outputs. It has now been 93 hours since we have last given her a DDAVP shot, and her sodium levels are still in an acceptable range. We are not certain that her body can control this completely on its own, but this is a very encouraging sign that she is on the road to recovery.

Over the last few days the area around Carly's incision has swollen considerably (we have joked that instead of a forehead she has an eight-head.) To ensure that the swelling was not affecting her brain she had an ultrasound this afternoon. The results looked great and all of the key brain areas are healing well. To address the swelling Dr. Gupta will perform an outpatient procedure on Thursday to extract the fluid that is trapped between her skull and her skin. They will wrap her head in a bandage for a few days in hope that the pressure will discourage the fluid from returning.

The last bit of news from the last few days is that Carly has taken to eating solid foods like never before! Prior to surgery Christa had been working on getting Carly to like solid food, but it would take more than twenty minutes to get her to eat a few teaspoons. Today, Carly polished off a half container of banana baby food before moving on to carrot. This will make it so much easier to help her put on some much needed weight.

Love, Brad