Brain Surgery #5

Emily needs another brain surgery. Yep, our summer officially sucks! We had our appointment with the neurosurgeon this morning. I was so proud of Emily. She did such an amazing job of talking to the doctor and explaining what happens when she gets her headache episodes. She told about how it feels worse when she stands up and that she has to lay down to make it better. She talked about how it hurts on both sides of her head. And the doctor even commented on how impressed she was with Emily when she was doing her neurological checks on her and how perfectly Emily was able to follow all of the directions she had to during the exam. The doctor has always been impressed with how grown up Emily is.

Dr. Canady was going to order a CT scan for her, but then decided against it because of the fact that Emily has slit ventricles. A CT scan would not show that the ventricles are enlarged since they are slit. She suggested to me that we go ahead and tap the shunt in the office today. I agreed that it needed to be done, though I knew that Emily would not be happy with it. The doctor and her nurse came in with the supplies and I held Emily in my lap facing me. The doctor spread her hair apart and found the bulb of the shunt and then rubbed iodine on it. She took a butterfly needle and inserted it into the shunt and then tried to withdraw some of the CSF fluid out of the shunt. Not a single drop of fluid came out. This indicated that the shunt is blocked and that a revision is necessary. Emily was crying, of course, because she was upset by the poke of the needle, and scared to have another brain surgery. Because I didn't have any place else for Ethan to go, he just had to stay in the room with us and watch the procedure. (I think the procedure hurt him as much as it did Emily.)

As we were leaving the office, she was quite upset and I had to stop in the hall and reassure her that everything was going to be okay. I told her that the important thing was that her headaches were going to go away after her surgery and that is what mattered right now. As we got to the ground floor of the hospital, we did our usual thing that we ALWAYS do and we strolled through the gift shop. Emily has already picked out her little stuffed animal that she wants when she has surgery and that will be what Ethan gets for her. After that, we walked over to get some ice cream. Emily seemed to be in a much better mood by this point and was even laughing and joking around with Ethan. It wasn't until the car ride home that things changed again and she started crying. She realized that her hair was going to have to be shaved again and this really upset her. Her hair has JUST NOW grown out enough from the last surgery to where it is even and almost all one length. I told her that they aren't going to have to shave off as much as they did last time because she is only having a shunt revision this time. It didn't matter what I said, nothing is going to change the fact that some of her hair is going to have to be shaved off. She was still upset. And there just wasn't anything I could do to make it better for her either.

But several hours have passed now. She is okay. She and Ethan have been playing and you would never even know she has a problem. As far as when we are going to do it, I am going to try and get it scheduled for Monday of next week if that day is available.

Now, here is the Murphy's Law part of this whole thing. We all know that Rob re-enlisted into the Army because of the medical needs of our kids. More importantly, because of the medical insurance we needed from the military. Well, ironically, our "new" insurance with the military won't go into effect until July 1st at the earliest. So, this means that Ethan's recent hospital stay AND Emily's brain surgery will all be filed on our current BCBS insurance, which all has a nice set of copays and deductibles that go along with it. So, we are only a few weeks away from a really cheap insurance, but I can't make my child suffer for a few weeks to save a few dollars. These really are the types of things that just seem to happen to us. And you just have to laugh about them because you can't cry. :) And I almost have Emily's last brain surgery paid off. Ha-ha!

I'll update again as soon as I have a confirmed date for the surgery.