All's Well

We are home from Cara's MRI and she is back to her normal self--playing and eating. In fact, she woke from the anesthesia very quickly and just as quickly consumed two bananas and two packages of animal cookies. She was starving, having gone without anything but apple juice since 9pm last night!

The follow-up with neurosurgery went well also. We saw one of our favorite nurse practitioners, Jenn, and she reset Cara's shunt setting. It went from 1.0 to 2.5 due to the magnetism of the MRI machine! That's going from having her value open quite a bit to having it almost all the way closed. Heck, when I was in the room while Cara was going under sedation, the machine grabbed onto the medal in my ID tag and tried to strangle me! What really amazed me was that Jenn could both check her shunt setting and adjust it without even having to touch her shunt! The wonders of modern medicine.

We also learned that Cara's head circumference has decreased in size to 51cm and we're down to the 98% from over 100% prior to the shunt...very good news! Jenn also said that her ventricles looked good, both have decreased in size since her last MRI in July of last year. All is well, shunt-wise. We will continue to count our blessing for every day that goes by without a malfunction with her shunt.

We will hear from neurology tomorrow as to what the radiologist confirmed from the scan. Watch for another update soon.

A Big Day

Today, Cara has her MRI at Children's Hospital to check for any structural problems *read: tumors or other growths* in her brain. We are leaving shortly as we have to be there an hour ahead of schedule for sedation. I'm really hoping that they will give her an oral sedative and not through an IV and that they will let us hold her until she drifts off. It's much peaceful of a transition that way, I think.

Right after the MRI, we have an appointment with neurosurgery to reset her programmable shunt. Due to the magnetism of the MRI, it is suspected that her set will de-program itself and will need to be reset. Thankfully, this is so very simple. There's a device that they "attach" to her shunt from outside of her head and it will set the shunt back to the correct setting, no invasive surgery needed!

All in all, we expect to be out of hospital and on our way home around 4-4:30 this afternoon. Once again, I am asking...if you pray, please do so; cross fingers and toes if that's more your cup of tea. Whatever it is you do for good luck, please think of Cara while you do it. I will update everyone later. This should be a very smooth procedure and Cara is an old champ! :)