Tuesday afternoon they moved and replaced Nicholas' lateral ventricle shunt. He also had to get a Broviac, central line, because all his veins are full of scar tissue and they couldn't get an IV in. I'm not thrilled that he has the Broviac but it's good because they don't have to stick him a million times to get an IV in. After surgery his head looked great and the swelling had gone down. Wednesday the swelling came back but he was eating, awake, and active so it seemed ok. The neurosurgeon said that when they go in to fix the shunt any CSF that couldn't go down the shunt escapes to the path of least resistance which could be in between the tissues in his head. He said he wants to watch it and hopefully it will go away on its own. He also said he could wrap his head to add pressure to force the fluid down. His new shunt is programmable so they also changed the setting to release the fluid faster. Today he has been extra sleepy and started vomiting again. They told me that they want to wait and see if he vomits again before they will order a CT. I tried to tell them that he isn't a puker and only throws up when he has a shunt problem but they still wanted to wait. He threw up half an hour after they left so his nurse called and they ordered a head x-ray to check the valves. So, they are thinking that they either need to reprogram the shunt again or open up the fourth ventricle shunt again. This is so frustrating! It should have been one surgery and a 2 day stay but it turned into 3 surgeries and the possibility of another and a week stay so far. I just can't believe they can't get this right.
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