On Pins And Needles

Last night was far from good for Carly. Her shunt adjustment that allowed it to flow more easily seemed to offer a little improvement earlier in the day, but as night came her discomfort escalated. She wasn't able to sleep for more than a few 20 minute patches and Christa and I rocked, held, bounced, and walked with her throughout the night. At 5am the neurosurgery resident adjusted Carly's shunt down once again which seemed to help for a couple hours but she became inconsolable again into the morning. Needless to say we were very concerned and hoping that there would be some answers today.

Carly had a head CT scan at 11am to see if there were obvious signs of too high or low cranial pressure. The scan didn't show any changes from earlier in December, but looking back at a scan from September they saw a pretty big increase in ventricle size between then and the December scans. This could indicate that she has been under higher than desired pressure for many weeks and could possibly explain her recent problems. The neurosurgery nurse practitioner said there is a chance that the most recent shunt setting will help her get to a pressure that she can tolerate. She added that there is also a possibility that this shunt is not functioning at 100%, restricting the flow and adding to her pressure issues. They have scheduled another study for tomorrow to help evaluate the shunt function to help rule out another shunt malfunction.

When they shared these details with us Carly had been resting pretty peacefully for almost an hour, a major improvement from the night. Carly has continued to rest peacefully since then and has now been at peace for almost six hours. She hasn't been this comfortable for many days and it has lifted our spirits to finally see her doing better. We don't know if this will keep up though the night or not, but we are cherishing every minute of it and are hopeful that this is the beginning of the healing trend that we have all been waiting for.

Love, Brad