More changes

Two days ago when I was holding Joshua, I felt a drip on my hand.  Matt at the same time noticed that his dressing on his head was wet.  The nurse paged neurosurgery to come and take a look.  The nurse practitioner from neurosurgery came up.  She took the dressing off of his head.  She poked and prodded around the area where the catheter comes out and wasn’t able to find anything dripping.  Her opinion was that it was fine.  Matt and I left shortly after that because the NICU was closing.  When we got back to the Ronald McDonald House, Joshua’s nurse called to tell us that they had noticed that no fluid was dripping from the catheter into the drain.  Therefore they took him down for a CT scan.  When neurosurgery looked at the CT scan they found that the just the tip of the catheter was still in his ventricle, but it had pulled out 2 centimeters.  They just wanted to watch for any other changes. 

The next two shifts only collected 5 mL and 7 mL.  In one shift they usually collect 20 mL.  When Joshua’s neurosurgeon came the next day, he told us that he wanted to take the catheter out.  He didn’t feel like it was doing anything for him anymore and his white blood count had spiked for the second time in 3 days.  At this point, the catheter had more risk than reward.  Another doctor pulled the catheter and stitched up the opening.  This is a little sooner than our doctor originally had wanted unfortunately.  During these next 24 – 48 hours we’re going to be watching to see if CSF is leaking from either his incision on his back or from the area on his head that was stitched. 

We need some extra prayer while we wait and see what happens.  We’re continuing to be positive and hopeful!