Wow, time sure does fly. Two years ago, at this time, I was in my fourth hour of sitting in the recovery room with Alison after her surgery to place a VP shunt. I was exhausted, having been up since 3 in the morning, but to wired to rest. That was a scary time for us. We had been really hoping that Alison wouldn’t need the shunt. We knew it was a long shot, as the ventricles in her brain never stabilized in utero even after fetal surgery, they continued to gow. A long talk with Alison’s SB doctor eased a lot of our fears. He even showed us a shunt that he “just happened to have” in his pocket. It also helped that our neurosurgeon felt she was in the “most successful outcome” category of shunt patients, the ones who get their shunt and never have a problem with it.
So my little girl, 7 months and 2 days old, whose hair was just starting to grow back in, went off to surgery and came out with just about half her head shaved, an inch and a half long incisions behind her right ear held closed with staples that made it look like a zipper, an IV on the left side of her head held in with enough tape to secure Texas (according to her nurse), and a smaller incision on her stomach. To keep her from pulling on either the IV or the dressing over the shunt, she had a bunch of gauze wrapped around her head, like a little headband of sorts. She was not very happy, and wanted to be held most of the time (and who could blame her), but we were able to control her pain with Tylenol and Motrin. She, and I, spent the night in the hospital and were given the ok to go home the next afternoon, about 2 days earlier than I was expecting.
Here's a couple of pictures taken a few weeks after the surgery. You can sort of see a tiny bit of stubble starting to come in where her head was shaved.
And now, here we are two years later. Alison has not had any problems with her shunt, despite scaring me a little bit earlier this week. We are hopeful that she will continue to be problem free.
No comments:
Post a Comment