Exciting weekend

On Friday morning, Micah started throwing up. This, on top of a bulging soft-spot, led Melissa to take him into the emergency room here in Logan for a look-see. They concluded that he his shunt might be malfunctioning and transported Micah and Melissa to Primary Children's Medical Center in SLC by ambulance--with lights and sirens and everything. I followed them down a bit later after squaring our boys away at kindly neighbors' houses.

CAT scans and x-rays convinced the PCMC staff that the shunt was working just fine. Instead, they reasoned that the shunt (which is on his right-hand side) had worked so well that it had drained the right-hand ventricle to the point where it had closed and was no longer "communicating" with the left-hand ventricle. Thus, the left ventricle no longer benefited from the draining services of the shunt on the right side. To solve the problem, the PCMC neurosurgical team decided to install another shunt on the left side.

The surgery (on Saturday morning) went fine. Micah is having somewhat of a hard time bouncing back: he had to take on two doses of morphine last night and hasn't picked up where he left off eating-wise, either. But the PCMC staff still feels that we'll likely be able to take him home this evening.

Here are a few pictures of Micah in the hospital pre-surgery...







...and here are some pictures of our poor little kiddo post-surgery. He looks pretty knocked-about, but he's going to be OK. The new shunt should immediately take pressure off of his little brain and knock out his headache and nausea. The "DB" initials on his temple are an autograph from his neurosurgeon, Dr. Brockmeyer... I guess they jot on kiddos to confirm that they've discussed the procedure with the parents and to mark which side of the patient ought to be prepped for surgery...