Eli's VP shunt failed yesterday and he had to have surgery to fix it today. He just got out of surgery a few minutes ago and everything went very well. The catheter from his brain to the valve was clogged and had to be replaced. He should be waking up soon so I may have to cut this short. Assuming he recovers from the surgery as quickly as he has in the past, we will likely be able to go home tomorrow.
Yesterday Eli woke up and promptly threw up after not sleeping well all night. We thought it was just regular kid stuff type sick but we started to get worried when he wasn't feeling better after throwing up everything he ate all day. At about 8pm I checked the valve on his shunt and the bulb was stuck in the "in" position. The valve is under the skin on his head and to test it you push in on the bulb (an m&m sized lump on his head) and if it squeezes in and pops out quickly the shunt is working. When I pressed it, it was already stuck in the depressed position. All I could think was "Oh F**K!" When his shunt was put in at Hackensack in January one of the doctors told us "The only sure thing about shunts is that they fail. They all fail, whether that takes ten years or ten weeks." Apparently this one was more of the ten weeks variety. Hopefully this newly fixed one will last a bit longer.
Eli is doing great otherwise and has been very strong and in good spirits througout this hospital stay. He has been his usual happy and talkative self. He even thanked the nurses for putting in his IV! Such a sweet boy.
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