On the mend

As you may have read from my last post, Tyler hasn't been feeling good. We thought it was just the stomach bug. However if you have a non-verbal child with a shunt, your first thought is 'Is it the shunt?' and since he can't tell you if his head hurts you have to wonder. The signs of a shunt malfunction are the same signs of the flu; vomiting, lethargic, etc. So you begin to play the guessing game. Do you take him to the hospital that specializes in his shunt (which is 2 hours away) or do you just stick it out at home and let the bug run it's course. Well we stuck it out at home for most of it until today and Tyler seemed to get a little better. He isn't vomiting anymore but he is still very weak and not acting quite like himself. We figured after being sick for an entire week, it would take him awhile to get his strength back. But we decided it would be best to double check his shunt. We were nearing his yearly check-up with his neurosurgeon anyways.

The good news is his shunt is still working great! I even snapped a few pictures of today's scan and previous scans.

 

The black area are his ventricles where the fluid is built up. His brain has really started to "fluff" out and should cover the entire area like the image below. I really wish I could have got a picture of his original scan at birth, but the computer was acting up and it wouldn't pull up.There was so much pressure on his brain at birth that it was pencil thin all around his skull and you could barely see any brain matter.

 

Picture of a normal brain

I know this may sound strange, but I am thankful that this was just a stomach virus.