Kirsten

Kirsten is a little girl who is 3 months younger than Alison. She has Spina Bifida, too, and also had fetal surgery. We stumbled across her webpage when we were looking for information about shunts/kids with shunts. Since then we've been keeping track of how she's been doing via her webpage.

When we first "met" her last February, Kirsten was 4 months old and in the hospital having her second shunt revision (that would be her third sugery). Before she was finally discharged from the hospital in April, she had two more revisions. Since then, she hasn't had any problems with her shunt.

Today there was an update to her webpage letting everyone know that she had been admitted to the hosptial again last night after two weeks of extreme fussiness and becoming increasingly lethargic throughout the day yesterday. As her mother was taking her to the clinic, she experienced her first seizure. Later last night she was vomiting and had spiked a fever.

These symptoms scream shunt infection or shunt failure. However, our SB doctor told us that sometimes kids with shunts will become symptomatic when they are sick because the illness causes excess production of cerebral spinal fluid and the shunt can't handle it. When the illness clears up, fluid levels return to normal, and the kids are no longer symptomatic. We're praying this is the case for Kirsten.

Usually it's not a problem to almost forget that there's anything wrong with Alison. When things like this happen it brings it all front and center again. We've been given every reason to expect that Alison's shunt will be problem free, but there's always that chance that something will go wrong and maybe we won't be so lucky the next time.

For now though, we'll just count our blessings that Alison is fine, keep checking for updates on how Kirsten is doing and pray that everything will be all right for her.