Original Blog Post: January 16, 2009- We Wait

Caedmon's ultrasound this morning showed no growth in ventricle fluid from the CT they took two days ago.  He's just holding steady.  He had some swelling around the incision area where they had drawn the shunt out of but nothing that seemed to overly concern the neurosurgical team.  Last night and today he had some leakage out of the former shunt area, a very small amount that seemed to come from one little area between stitches.  Dr. Nagib came this afternoon and closed that up with one more stitch.  For that four second procedure we had to starve our poor little boy for 7 hours.  The reason being that they didn't know if Dr. Nagib would call for him to get into surgery for a shunt or if he would try the stitch first and see how Caedmon's body handled that.  When we found out it would be the stitch they didn't want him to eat and then throw everything up when he cried from the stitch being put in.  The neurosurgeon's nurse seemed surprised the doctor hadn't been in yet at hour #5 when I asked how long we would have to wait to feed him, then we sat for 2 more hours.  It seems like there should be some more efficient way of doing things, though I don't know what.  That's pretty much all the news.  We just sit and wait now.  They'll wait 72 hours before redoing the ultrasound.  We may not have to wait at the hospital that whole time, it depends on if there is more leakage or not.  They took more blood work to check for infection and all of it has come back negative, so we are clear of that, praise God!  The infection would have put us in the hospital for much, much longer.  I am exhausted from a very long night at the hospital and am planning on a bath and early bed.