Waiting

I just had a talk with Nicholas' neurosurgeon. He still wants to try and wait this out. He said that people usually adapt to an over draining shunt. He looked at the Theratogs and said that those would work for wrapping his stomach. By wrapping his stomach, we are putting pressure there which will cause cause less pressure in his brain thus slowing down the shunt. He said by looking at the scans, the obvious answer is the 4th ventricle needs to be shunted. He is reluctant to do that since he already had one and he feels it didn't do him any good. He said he is willing to wait up to a month for him to adapt but will do something sooner if he continues not eating. He will be in the hospital as long as he needs fluids. He said that he could change the valve in his current shunt but that he should adapt to it and another surgery increases his risk of a shunt infection. If he gets a shunt infection the shunt has to be removed then he will be treated with antibiotics and the shunt will be put back in. So it looks like we will be here for a while while we wait.