Lucky Number Twelve

Carly had her fastest shunt surgery yet. Dr. Gupta found a clog in the ventricular catheter, but the rest of the shunt was working normally. This meant that she was able to avoid a belly incision this time, which is often the most tender area. She has eaten well since the surgery, and although she is a bit uncomfortable it is looking like she may be able to settle down for some sleep. We will be heading home tomorrow and will be hoping that things keep flowing through number twelve. Thanks for all of your love and support.

Love, Brad

Made To Last

Carly is heading back to the OR tomorrow for shunt number twelve.  Her surgery is scheduled to begin around 2pm, and we will be spending the night up at UCSF after her procedure. If there are no complications we should be able to go home Thursday, and hopefully lucky #12 lasts longer than the rest.

Love, Brad

Searching For The Right Shunt

Carly’s recovery from her last surgery went very well and she was back to her smiling self pretty quickly.  This good run was pretty short lived though, as the same symptoms that we saw before the shunt revision started to come back just over a week after the surgery. Her seizures have returned and she has moments each day where we can just tell that she isn’t feeling well, with the likely cause being high intra-cranial pressure. Fortunately she still has many good moments each day, but it is looking like shunt number eleven is not working as well as it needs too.  Neurosurgery has adjusted the shunt to flow more easily, but so far that has not seemed to have any noticeable effect.  They have also tapped the shunt to see if an infection could be causing the clogging.  All of the early results from the cultures do not show an infection which is good.  There is one possible infection type that takes many days to show up in a culture so we have to wait until tomorrow to know if that type can be ruled out.  If the cultures look good, and her symptoms continue, she will most likely have another shunt revision surgery early next week.  Neurosurgery told us that they sometimes have cases like Carly where it takes numerous shunt revision surgeries to deal with clogging issues, but they assured us that eventually the shunts start to last. Hopefully Carly is near that point. You can help by visualizing her brain in a perfect state, with no problems from pressure.

Love, Brad