Lizzie's New Shunt

Lizzie is the proud owner of a new shunt. They ended up doing her surgery today, it was delayed about 2 hours but then it only took about 1 1/2 hours to do. Right now she is just waking up from her anesthesia in our room.

This whole brain surgery stuff is quite amazing. The shunt is in one of her ventricals in her brain(areas that hold fluid). The shunt is hooked to a tube that drains the fluid into her body. Her tube comes behind the left ear(under the skin), where they made another incision before dragging the tube down her body through a layer of fat into the stomach area. It doesn't drain directly into the stomach, kind of next to the stomach where I guess the body always has fluids floating around that we naturally process. It will drain there and the body will do the rest to absorb the fluids. They also had to do a small incision in her stomach for the end of the tube.

The risks of a shunt are infection and clogging. They said that a neurosurgeon here started a group of doctors across the west that communicate with each other regularly that are on the cutting edge(no pun intended) of dealing with shunts and their problems when they occur. One doctor I spoke with said that the infection rates at PCMC are half as much as the national average at about 4% chance of infection. He also said that if it were to clog it is a 15 minute surgery to fix the problem. If there is infection there is a minimum 1 week stay at a hospital required(won't go into that now).

We were "excited" to hear that because she had a shunt her recovery will be even longer. Please know we are not complaining. It is kind of funny that I thought originally that we would be home by now. It has been two weeks since her first surgery and feels like forever. It still feels like we have an incredibly long way to go. I would be surprised if we will be able to go home in the next couple of weeks.

We really are excited to hear that the surgery went well though. We feel happy that the shunt surgery is done now. We just hope it will do its job, and do it well. They said they put extra tubing in so that as she grows their will be enough tubing so that they won't have to go in and replace the shunt unless there is a necessity. Her shunt could last forever and that is what we are hoping for. We feel that three surgeries is sufficient for now. We both feel relief that the surgery is over and that it went well. She still has fluid built up on the right side of her brain, so if you are praying for her, please pray specifically that her fluid can drain properly and that she can recover well from surgery.

Holy Cow this is crazy! We just never imagined this would happen to us. We feel so much peace right now and hope that everything works well so we can work on Lizzie's recovery. As always, thanks again for your support and prayers. They are much appreciated!