Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Under The Weather

Carly's school started back up last week and her teacher and aides were happy to see her, but she was clearly not feeling that great. She was very tired and slept through most of the day, but she did share a few of her cute smiles with her aide Cece.  By the end of the week Carly needed to stay home, as she was feeling increasingly bad.

We tried a shunt adjustment going into the weekend to see if that was the problem, but that didn't do the trick.  Over the weekend Carly continued to feel sick and sleepy, and while the symptoms seem a bit like a faulty shunt it is not quite the same.  Caroline, the nurse practitioner for the neurosurgery team, said that it is not uncommon for patients to start to show a range symptoms due to inflammation from radiation around 3 months after gamma knife treatment. The symptoms vary greatly and depend on the areas of the brain that were adjacent to the radiation.  Carly is now 11 weeks out from her gamma knife treatment, so it is possible this is why she isn't feeling good.  We will see how she does over the next few days, and keep our fingers crossed that she starts feeling a lot better soon.  Thanks for keeping her in your thoughts and prayers.

Love, Brad

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Quick Exit

Carly rested well through the night, and the stars must have been aligned because we managed to get discharged from the hospital before 8am this morning. This was a first, and it wouldn't have been possible if Carly wasn't such a strong girl. As we got home and put her in her bed for a nap, I realized that only 30 hours earlier we were waking up in the middle of the night with Carly feeling terrible due to a clogged shunt. It is amazing to see how much better she can feel in such a short amount of time, and it is a tribute to Dr. Auguste for putting the plan for surgery to action so quickly after we called the neurosurgery pager.  Getting to spend the afternoon enjoying the sun in Sausalito was a big improvement over Saturday and a great way to end the whirlwind weekend.

Love, Brad

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Nineteen

Over the last three weeks, Carly's shunt has shown intermittent signs of clogging. Unlike most times in the past, there were several moments when we thought a shunt surgery was just days away only to have Carly pull out of it with good days. This was a great surprise each time, but last night the symptoms of a shunt failure continued to intensify and a surgery was clearly on the way. We phoned neurosurgery in the morning and Dr. Auguste had Carly in the operating room by 2pm. The shunt was clearly clogged in a few places, and these parts were replaced. Carly is recovering well so far, and she has even cracked a few little smiles. We are listening to some bedtime tunes, and hopefully we will all get some good rest. I expect we will be able to go home tomorrow, and we are hopeful that shunt #19 will continue the trend of longer lasting shunts.

Love, Brad