Just got back from another visit.  Mikie was snoozing away.  I thought we might have a lengthy battle ahead of us clearing up the spinal fluid, because though it is lighter in color, it still has a greenish tint.  While we were there this time the Neurosurgery Nurse Practitioner stopped by and he was all smiles, too.  He said they are already planning on re-internalizing the shunt into the heart as early as next week. (Not sure if I mentioned this before, but the spinal fluid used to drain into the abdomen and it can’t do that anymore, or we would likely be back to this same problem in another year or so.  So it will go right into the heart and from there mixed in with the blood and spread through the body. Sounds scary, doesn’t it?)  Though the spinal fluid is tinted, it is not bacteria that we see, and as long as there are no bacteria, we will be ready to move to the next phase.  We did hear early today that the blood still has bacteria in it, and we don’t know what that means yet, but I would think Mikie would have to be pretty ‘clean’ before they proceed with putting a new shunt in.  The big thing for us is that we don’t hear anyone talking about bad news, most everything looks good.

There is a slight problem with his feeding tube in that it is leaking stomach juices to the outside of his body so they are calling in a consultation from some gastrointestinal docs.  Mikie managed to pull this thing out twice today, once while the nurse was giving him a bath.  We warned them to watch his little hands!  We don’t see this a major problem that an adjustment in the size of the hardware won’t fix.  I replace this thing at home all the time.  We used to have to run to the hospital but after seeing them do it so many times I learned to do it myself.  It has a balloon on one end that has to be filled with distilled water or saline.  The balloon ends up being inside him and he has actually pulled it through the hole with the balloon still intact.  It had to hurt like the dickens (there’s a phrase to look up!), and it used to break the balloon when he pulled it out in the past, so I think the hole has been stretched open a bit.

Mike