Hospital Day 2

Everything is still going really well today. We finished the last round of antibiotics last night. Robert slept really well for most of the night. At one point his incision on his head got scratched and that was bugging him. We put a little bandage on it, and then they found a hat for him to wear. It is about 4 sizes to big though. It looks like he is about to go play in the snow. :)

We met with Dr. George this morning. He said everything looks really good. He said the shunt will drain the fluid over time rather than all at once. He also said he could already see a difference (we have too), but we will continue to see his head change as the fluid drains over the next week or so. We will just have to wait and see. We are so glad that Dr. George has been our Dr. The more we talk with him the more we really like him. We asked him 20 questions this morning, and he was very patient with us and made sure he answered them all. He said we would need to come back to see him in a couple of weeks. After that it would be one month, then three, and then six. After Robert turns two we would start yearly visits. All that changes if we run into issues, but it was nice to know what the schedule would start to look like. One of our big questions was how much do we have to worry about him damaging the shunt while he's playing with Jack or just being a normal kid. He said it is very hard to damage the shunt but it does happen. The next thing he said was probably the best thing he could have ever said to me. He said that the whole idea here was to give Robert the ability to have a normal life. If he wasn't going to have the option to have a normal life, then what would be the reason to do all this? He said we won't have to watch him and worry about the shunt every minute. He can even play sports! He wouldn't recommend football, rugby, or boxing, but he doesn't recommend those sports to anyone.

We have also noticed that Robert seems to sleep on his back now. Prior to the operation he would fuss like crazy if you tried to lay him down on his back to sleep. This lead to a lot of long sleepless nights for us, because one of us would lay in bed and hold him on our chest while he slept. We asked Dr. George if the reason Robert was able to sleep on his back now was related to the surgery. His answer was very interesting. He said that children will instinctively protect themselves without really knowing why they are doing it. He said when you lay down on your back the pressure in your head always increases. Robert probably wasn't in pain, but he instinctively knew that if he was on his back it was worse for his brain. Dr. George said he sees these instincts a lot in children and tries to use them to help determine the best treatment for his patients. He said we will have to make sure that we help encourage Robert to try and do new things that might be scary, like riding a bike. He may tend to be more instinctively afraid of new things like that then he normally would have been. Again, it is just one of those things to wait and see about, but something to keep in mind.

We are still trying to catch up on sleep. We are still waiting to see if we will be discharged this evening or not. Dr. George said if Robert keeps nursing well all day we may get discharged tonight. I still think we will be here until tomorrow though.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as they are obviously having a positive impact!