Recoup

Carly's recovery started a bit slow, but she was feeling well enough to be discharged just before noon today.  It was a big help that all of the staff at UCSF knows us well and we live close to the hospital, otherwise they may have wanted to observe her a bit longer.  When Carly got home she was already back to smiling and she had a good afternoon.  She is now sleeping peacefully in her own bed, and hopefully having some sweet dreams.  The love from Team Carly is a big help for us all, as always.

Love,

Brad

Twenty

Carly went in for surgery at noon today, and they finished up just after two. Everything went smoothly, and Dr. Gupta found clogs in both of the catheters so he replaced all of the shunt hardware. The high protein in her CSF is still the culprit, as it has been for most of the shunts, but it has come down a bit over the last few months and we are hoping that trend continues. Carly is feeling sore, but she did just finish a bottle and is resting now. She has a lot of neighbors separated only by curtains, so hopefully everyone is feeling good through the night. We expect to be heading home sometime tomorrow morning.  Love,  Brad

Deja vu

Carly's symptoms didn't improve, and she hasn't really felt good for almost three weeks now.  For awhile it did not seem like a shunt issue, but as we headed into the weekend we were fairly certain that the shunt was to blame.  With it being a holiday weekend, both Dr. Gupta and Dr. Auguste were out of town so we were hoping to make it to Tuesday without Carly needing surgery.  On Saturday Carly was feeling terrible, so we went to the emergency room and the neurosurgery resident tapped the shunt and took off some fluid to relieve the pressure.  Within an hour Carly was felling a lot better, it was like night and day.  It was a big relief to see her feeling better, and to know that the shunt was at least a part of the problem.

While we were happy to see her feeling better, we also knew that taps only provide temporary relief so we here hoping that she would make it Tuesday or Wednesday.  Thankfully, she made it through the rest of the weekend without getting too bad, and she is now scheduled to head to the OR tomorrow around 11am to get shunt #20. We'll be visualizing another successful surgery, and hoping that this shunt wil last longer then the rest.  Thanks for keeping her in your thoughts.

Love, Brad