Friday, August 6, 2010

Shunt revision surgery tomorrw

I haven't posted for a while..
I was going to post about our trip to the Kennedy Krieger institute and how Jason started cruising recently..
Well, but I have to post a sad news.
Jason is back in the Childrens National Medical Center.
He was doing wonderful until this Monday when he started to retch and vomit again.  Since he was off the chemotherapy for the past 3 weeks, there was no reason for him to start retching and vomiting.  It appeared that retching and vomiting was getting a little bit worse day by day.. and yesterday, when we went back to Childrens hospital for his 3rd round of chemotherapy, I raised my concern to his doctors.  They ordered a head CT scan yesterday which showed increased fluid collection in his ventricles (worsening hydrocephalus).  The neurosurgery people came to the oncology clinic and they adjusted Jason's VP shunt setting to allow more flow/increase flow rate.  After 8 hours of long hospital visit, we came home hoping that Jason's vomiting will get better with VP shunt flow adjustment.
Well, things don't always go the way we want...=(
Last night, Jason developed severe vomiting and retching.. from around 2:00 to 3:30 am, his vomiting and retching was almost non-stop.  Finally I gave him some anti-nausea medication and he fell asleep.
This morning, he woke up vomiting and retching again.. so I knew something was definitely wrong.
So I emailed his oncologist, neuro-oncologist and neurosurgeon about what happened last night.  They immediately called me and told me to bring Jason to the emergency room.
At the ER, Jason got head CT scan again and X-ray of head, chest, abdomen.. and finally when the neurosurgery team tried to tap his VP shunt for CSF sample, they couldn't get any... meaning that Jason't VP shunt is not functioning, no flow, it's blocked!!
Dr. Yaun, Jason's neurosurgeon, came by and she scheduled an operation to repair VP shunt tomorrow morning...
I know VP shunt malfunction is a common problem, but why can't we bypass this problem???
Jason had subdural hematoma only 2 months ago because of over-shunting and now he has a blocked shunt!!!
How unlucky!...
well..I am just hoping that tomorrow's surgery will go uncomplicated.. and everything will be fixed and Jason will be fine!!
God!! please help Jason!

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