Today our sweet little c turns 4. For most of that time she has been fighting hard, first against the tumor and now against a variety of complications that are keeping her from feeling her best. She is inspiring to us, and many others, and through it all she continues to bring the best out of people that know her.
More than anything I wanted her to have a normal birthday, feeling well enough to enjoy a few bites of cake and smile at the crinkling of some wrapping paper. Unfortunately, her most recent shunt has slowly started to become obstructed and yesterday it finally stopped working all together. Carly will be heading into the OR pretty soon today for a shunt revision to replace the faulty components once again. The good news is that the protein continues to get a little lower, and the other cell counts in her CSF are looking better than they have in a very long time. We are still hopeful that this could indicate that things are starting to heal, and soon she will have protein levels that stop interfering with the flow through the shunt. While it is not how any of us wanted her to spend her birthday, if she is nearing the end of this surgery cycle that is the best present we could ask for.
Love, Brad
