Life before the shunt

Tomorrow is the big day….. Wyatt will get a shunt in his brain that will probably be there for his lifetime. He needs all the prayers he can possibly get now. We pray that the shunt will drain effectively to his abdomen. We pray that the shunt will have no complications like infection and that it will do its job of draining cerebral spinal fluid from his brain. Hopefully after this operation, Wyatt will be making progress and will be on his way home! Many people have been asking why does he need a shunt? Well Wyatt was on ECMO for 13 days. While on ECMO, babies are given high doses of Heparin, which is a blood thinner so that the machine will not clog. Everyday Wyatt had a head sonogram which showed no bleeds. On day 13, Wyatt had surgery in the late afternoon to repair his hernia. The surgery was successful and he was removed from ECMO. The following day, his head sonogram showed that he had an IVH (intraventricular hemorrhage) grade 1 . An IVH grade 1 is really no big deal and usually the blood absorbs back into the body. Overtime, Wyatt had many head sonograms and CT scans to follow the bleed. It escalated to a grade 4 with a bleed in the right temporal lobe. Who knows what caused the bleed??- ECMO or a complication of the operation?? Wyatt is alive, EMCO and the surgeons saved his life and that is the greatest gift a parent could ever receive. Dr. Carson has been following him since the initial bleed and said that there is really nothing that can be done and to hope that it absorbs. If it gets worse, then hydrocephalus will develop and a shunt will have to be placed. When Wyatt was on the 6th floor at Hopkins, they were talking about his next steps- home or Mt. Wash. I said that I would like another look at his head since his neurological plan seemed to be placed on the back burner. Dr. Carson ordered a CT scan and found that the ventricles had dilated more and that his soft spot on his head is becoming slightly firm and swollen so it’s time for a shunt. He wanted Wyatt’s organs to heal first and give him time to gain weight. That time has come. To put it in laymen’s terms….. think of the ventricles in your brain as a sink and that the blood is clogging the drain, like hair would clog your shower drain. The clog is preventing cerebral spinal fluid to travel back into the body and is slowly building up in his head. Hopefully tomorrow, the CSF will be properly draining and Wyatt will be on the road to recovery. Our next step will be a swallow study possibly done on Friday to see if Wyatt can take the bottle. If not, a g-tube may need to be placed in his stomach. Wyatt is a tough, happy, little boy and this is just one more hurdle to jump over. Please keep him in your prayers on Tuesday. Thank you to everyone.