Abby’s shunt surgery is today. Her neurosurgeon isn’t happy with the way the catheter on the shunt is entering her brain ventricle, so the plan right now is to move the shunt altogether (not just a revision). Hopefully this will go smoothly and the neurosurgeon will be able to tell whether or not it truly is a shunt malfunction causing her increased ICP, as opposed to her skull simply not being big enough again. Abby is in good spirits this morning, and we’re all checked in and ready to go. Will hopefully be able to update as the day goes on, but Blogger isn’t super cooperative on my phone these days. Thank you for your continued positive thoughts.
Update 9:15am: Surgery is done! Things sound hopeful. The neurosurgeon was able to revise the existing shunt by adding a right-angled connector to get the catheter better situated in her ventricle. Not having to insert a whole new one should make recovery easier on Abby. He said that initially there was zero fluid coming through the shunt, indicating that it was definitely not working. When he was finally able to get fluid to come through the line he said the pressure was quite high, so hopefully this will have been enough to remedy her ICP. We won’t know for sure until her optic nerve swelling goes away (or doesn’t), which could take a few weeks. We’ll hopefully get to see her in the PICU soon.
Update 6:00pm: She’s doing great, perked up in the last hour and is totally acting like herself again. Slowly doing some food and water and we’ll see what tomorrow holds!
Update 11:00am Wednesday: She’s home! She’ll see ophthalmology in about a month, and we should have a better idea of next steps at that point. We’re thrilled to have her home so soon. This went way better than we imagined and we’re remaining hopeful that her optic nerve swelling will go down!
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