For the last few days, they have had Judah’s Intra Cranial Pressure (ICP) drain clamped to see if he can naturally drain/absorb it. We all thought he was because his ICP’s were reading so low and he was doing so well. At 4 am they took Judah down for a CT to ck on swelling and drainage of his spinal fluid from the brain in hopes of taking the ICP drain out. However, they found that I stead of draining it was actually just forcing its way out of the surgery wound into the area between the skin and skull. So he wasn’t managing his fluid. His fluid had just found an easier way out of the brain.
So tomorrow morning, if all goes well scheduling wise, they will put in a permanent shunt that will drain fluid from the brain to his belly internally. The surgery should only take an 1-2hrs and is minimal in risk. The Dr said it shouldn’t set him back any but instead give him the freedom to move around more and dive into PT/OT for quicker recovery.
We were at first sad about the prospect of another surgery but agreed that we need to move past this drainage issue and onto the talking/walking/treating the rest of the tumor issue. This affords us that.
We would appreciate continued prayers for Judah, surgery, recovery, us, and just being separated as a family. We miss Judah and Camilla Kate together.
Judah is going to need very intensive physical/occupational/speech therapy to fully recover and the logistics of that are complicated. Most of the Drs here think he needs inpatient therapy for 3-5 weeks but there is no inpatient therapy center in all of Tennessee that takes kids his age, the closest is Atlanta. One of the Drs thinks he can work something out here at Vanderbilt to get Judah outpatient therapy but in an intensive way – say 3 or more hours a day 6 days a week.
Being able to do therapy here would be much better for us as a family so we’re asking for specific prayers for God to open doors and make the therapy choices very clear and easy.
Thanks for all the encouraging words and prayers!
The surgery to put the shunt in will be tomorrow morning at 7:30am. Should be about an hour and a half and he’ll be intubated again but the tube will come out when the surgery is over. The process used to route the shunt to his belly will be pretty painful for Judah when he wakes up and he’ll have a total of 5 or 6 incisions (including the ones he already has) and every incision is an infection risk. So please pray for a flawless surgery, minimal pain and no infections!