When I woke up yesterday I knew that one of two things needed to happen:
a) somebody here needed to have a plan of action - or-
b) they needed to transfer Elisabeth to a different hospital.
We had been in room E307 for a full week without so much as an idea - and so I was honestly expecting that we would have to go with option (b). But to my pleasant surprise, the neurosurgeon entered our room bright and early with a thought; perhaps switching shunts two weeks ago (to a completely different brand) was enough to upset the balance in her head. And even though CT's showed that the ventricles in her brain appeared unchanged over the course of this past week, he wondered if the new shunt was over-draining. His solution was to put back in the exact kind that she originally had.
"It's a shot in the dark," he said, making sure I understood that he was not guaranteeing anything.
"Let's do it," I quickly replied.
A few hours later she was whisked off to surgery. The incision needed to be bigger this time around (for reasons that I cannot remember) - and he apologized for having to shave off more hair. But I told him that her hair was the least of my concerns.
So now we wait and watch. Was that the source of Elisabeth's pain? Will the new shunt bring her relief? It could take a day or two for things to even out in her head again. In the mean time I will continue to hope and pray and dream of the day when we are back at home again - just the way we are supposed to be.
a) somebody here needed to have a plan of action - or-
b) they needed to transfer Elisabeth to a different hospital.
We had been in room E307 for a full week without so much as an idea - and so I was honestly expecting that we would have to go with option (b). But to my pleasant surprise, the neurosurgeon entered our room bright and early with a thought; perhaps switching shunts two weeks ago (to a completely different brand) was enough to upset the balance in her head. And even though CT's showed that the ventricles in her brain appeared unchanged over the course of this past week, he wondered if the new shunt was over-draining. His solution was to put back in the exact kind that she originally had.
"It's a shot in the dark," he said, making sure I understood that he was not guaranteeing anything.
"Let's do it," I quickly replied.
A few hours later she was whisked off to surgery. The incision needed to be bigger this time around (for reasons that I cannot remember) - and he apologized for having to shave off more hair. But I told him that her hair was the least of my concerns.
So now we wait and watch. Was that the source of Elisabeth's pain? Will the new shunt bring her relief? It could take a day or two for things to even out in her head again. In the mean time I will continue to hope and pray and dream of the day when we are back at home again - just the way we are supposed to be.
