Thursday, September 23, 2010

ER again

Carly was in the ER today. She woke up at 4AM with a high temperature. After not sleeping we finally decided that she needed to go to the hospital to get checked out. I took Cayson to school and dropped Burke off at the sitter and headed to Cardon's. We went over her history and symptoms. This is her 2nd high fever in 3 weeks. The ER pediatrician agreed that a 2 1/2 year old should not have as many fevers and as frequently as she has. Blood, urine, x-ray, CT...all normal and was pawned off as another viral infection. I don't buy it though. Everything was normal. No elevations in anything. How can she have a viral infection? Her neurosurgeon was sent in and I talked to him for a while. We talked more about the ETV. Her vents have not increased in size and are still fairly small. The ETV is still an option for her but there would be more to it than previously discussed. Because visibility is less with thicker and smaller vents, he would have to expand her vents first. He would remove the tube from her belly and attach it to a bag of fluid and use gravity to expand her vents as far as they will go. Since they are making her hydrocephalic she will have all the symptoms...(loss of appetite, vomiting, headaches, sunset eyes)...NOT FUN! Then he couldn't guarantee that her vents would expand enough to greatly improve visibility. Less visibility means higher risk. Those risks include damage to pituitary gland (hormones), tissue damage (memory loss), optic nerve damage or femoral artery damage (which he stated, "she wouldn't leave the OR alive.") So after talking about it we decided that we can't handle those risks. We are going to go ahead with a revision and if that doesn't work then replacing her shunt. So that's where we are. Surgery is scheduled for Oct. 13th at 12:30. I'm nervous. She's going to be okay. Please tell me she is going to be okay.

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