A Longer Stay Than Expected...

Bea is still at Scottish Rite Hospital and is not doing well. So far she has had 2 surgeries. The first was on Saturday to replace part of a faulty VP shunt. That fix went well. However, the shunt was fixed but was still not draining well. That's making her very sleepy all the time.

Her neurosurgeon relieved pressure in her brain on Sunday by tapping her shunt and taking off some fluid. Later that day she did improve some. She could eat, talk a little, smile and do some foamy sticker crafts. She also watched some cartoons and a movie with me. She was awake on and off for several hours. Everybody thought her issue was the shunt, for sure.

Monday was another story. She was not very responsive and spent most of the day sleeping. This is not a good symptom. A CT scan was done and showed that her ventricals were still not draining well. Her neurosurgeon said that she should have showed more improvement than she did and for the first time indicated that he was concerned that the issue was not just the shunt.

Her neurosurgeon revised her shunt temporarily to be an external shunt yesterday afternoon. The brain fluid has been draining well. She woke up for a couple of hours last night and was able to hold onto toys and watch cartoons but that's it. No food and no talking.

All of her doctors have now said her condition is likey a combination of the shunt not working and the cancer growing. Bea is going to have an MRI tomorrow to see where she's at with that.

It's almost 11am and she still hasn't woken up though. It's making me kind of insane. I mean, she woke up for maybe half a minute earlier and I got all excited. But, it was a tease and she went right back to sleep.

This is total hell. I'm terrified that she's never going to really wake up.