Skip to main content

The Pursuit (post-op day 7/8)

A thousand apologies that I didn't get to the blog last night, since I pretty much collapsed into a deep sleep the moment my feet touched the threshold of our house. This hospital stuff is exhausting! Anyway so I found a computer here at the hospital but the blasted thing doesn't even have automated spell check; this is truly a dinosaur.
I won't keep you in suspense any longer, Leo had a decent day yesterday with them upping some of the doses of the narcotics to figure out how much his body is craving. Now they have "caught" him so to speak and this afternoon they will start the wean. And of course, our guy, if things look too slow will take matters into his own hands. Last night he managed to yank out his NG tube and then proceeded to down several bottles of milk. So finally his face is free of all the tubes and he is much, much happier with himself. He also had a MRI yesterday morning, and even though he screamed bloody murder the whole time, the scans look great and so he is on for surgery tomorrow morning to re-internilize his shunt. Even though it's another surgery, compared to what he went through a week ago today, this is a cake walk. We hope. And it just brings us one step closer to home.
Home! This morning driving in to the hospital I listend to the reading of the Declaration of Independence...yes I really did! Yes, yes I know that I usually get my news updates through the Colbert Report so this might come as a shock, but I really did listen and the thing that really struck me this time, was all that talk about making this country a better place so that people could pusue their happiness, whatever that entails. Happiness? A better place to call home? Most days I look around me and think that's all a crock of bull. But today, the day we usually blow up things, get bloated with burgers and if we are lucky, give thanks to all the folks who decided to talk matters into their own hands, I feel lucky to be here. Yeah, yeah it is far from perfect, but the reason my son is mostly perfect, is only because of this country and its although idealistic sometimes, perhaps obbsessive in cases,  pursuit of happiness. The chance, actually several chances at life that my son has been given here, would have been denied him in other countries. Definitely in my "motherland" in Russia. He would have been, if not aborted, not shunted and locked away in an insitution. I owe my happiness to this country. And so, on this day which I will spend not at a BBQ in riotous celebration, but in a quiet ICU room, I salute my country and give thanks in prayer that Leo had the gumption and the luck to be born here, to us. Happy 4th everyone!

Comments

  1. JaniceJuly 5, 2011 at 6:37 AM

    So true - we have been so blessed to be born in this country! Leo is in my prayers today and always. God Bless Leo, his family and his doctors.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

With Mixed Feelings

So for the past couple weeks my feed has been filled with the "back to school" and "end of summer" and "beginning of parental freedom from their annoying offspring" photos. It's ok, I totally get it. Another year, another back to school pic, another notch in the door jamb, and another chapter of growth and development with junior. Look at him go! Or not, as the case may be for many children. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease control and Prevention) one in six children has one...a developmental disability. A stamp of "not normal" across their foreheads. A number. A check mark in a box. My kid is one of them. I heard a brief segment on NPR that enticingly started out with the title of developmental delays on the rise, a 17% increase over the last twelve years. And though I turned up the volume the segment only talked about how it's probably only due to poverty, and it's only the upper classes that actually pursue diagnosis...
34 comments
Read more

Putting The Lion Back Into The Wild

I'm actually home tonight while the 'boys" are at the PICU for what could be, maybe, possibly, our last night. It's almost hard to believe that we could go home. It's like those animals who have been in captivity who are finally let out almost don't know what to do, and often cower in fear and confusion in their cages. We would be cowering, but that sounds like it takes too much energy. We are completely exhausted after ten days of this shunt malfunction marathon.  Yesterday afternoon Leo had the hopefully final surgery to fix his shunt. The Neurosurgeon replaced all the tubing and tunneled a whole new channel for it as far away from his lungs as possible. During which he discovered that the connection between the tubing and the shunt valve was leaking and welling up CSF as he was examining it. Also his old tubing was inserted pretty high under his breastbone which often can jeopardize the integrity of the surrounding tissues; in other words, the plu...
8 comments
Read more

Kinda Like 'Nam.

First off, sorry about the disjointed nature of the posting from yesterday. I was updating via text messegaing from my phone and because the service is patchy in the hospital not only were the posts chopped up but they were frequently out of order. You have to be a sleuth to figure it out. On the other hand, I guess it was a direct reflection of what we were experiencing! Between getting little bits of info and there, we had no clue what was going on. This is what we have been able to piece together since yesterday. The surgery itself was a definite success, though there were a few surprises. One of which being that when they took out Leo's shunt of 8 months they discovered that it was not working. Huh??? He never showed any symptoms of shunt failure and brain compression, so what the heck? In between the sobering list of items now holding risks for our guy, the nuero surgeon dropped this little bombshell on us. Does that ...
18 comments
Read more