Gut Feeling

Last Sunday, Hayden vomited 6 times. He has never vomited that much before, so I was concerned, especially since it seemed to corrolate with moving him/changing positions. On Monday, I called the pediatrician's office. I was told to bring him in if he continued to vomit that much that day. Of course, he only vomited is regular two times. Tuesday, he vomited 5 times in 12 hours. I had enough. My gut had been screaming at me for days. It was time to listen to it. Since it was 4pm, I decieded to call the neurologist's office instead of the pediatrician. Good thing I did. After describing Hayden's symptoms to the nurse, she thought I should talk to the neruologist. Dr. Palat thought I was correct to be concerned and sent us to the ER for a CT scan and labs. Hayden cooperated beautifully for the tests and laid perfectly still. He is the perfect patient. When I saw Dr. Palat walk into the room about 8pm, I knew it wasn't good news. They wouldn't call his neurologist in to give us good news. She said that the ventricles in his brain were a little larger than they were in his last CT scan. Translation: Something is wrong with his shunt. Immediately, I worry that he has a shunt infection like he had last year at this time. Even though he has had this shunt for almost a year, he just came off of a high dose of steroids that have lowered his immune system. This could allow something that is normally in his system and not a problem to become one. That was a risk we had to take to save his brain from the seizures. She continuted by telling me that he needed to go by ambulance to the University of Iowa Hospitals tonight. If this was a shunt infection, I was frustrated by the fact that he had to endure more surgeries and by the thought that Hayden and I would be stuck by ourselves 100 miles away from home for several weeks. Apparently, my son feels that he needs an ambulance ride every year. He was about to get his third ride.


Around 10pm, the paramedics arrived to take us to Iowa City. They were really sweet to us and they even made sure I had a Mt. Dew for the ride. If only they had had a pizza in there. I hadn't eaten since lunch at work at 11:15am, so I was starving and a little sick to my stomach at that point. Dean sat in back with he and we was interested in Hayden's long medical history. Apparently, his wife had done Hayden's shunt series at Mercy earlier that evening...small world. Hayden slept the entire way and was again the perfect patient. Dean was good company for the ride and was sweet enough to give Hayden a junior paramedic sticker. Now that he finally got a sticker, he will give up his annual ambulance rides.


We arrived in the ER at the University of IA about 11:30pm. His nurse was really nice and took my word that Hayden was a hard stick and that either a NICU nurse or a transport nurse would have to get it in. The transport nurses were out on a call, so she said that she would take a look and only try once. That was fair so I let her try. She almost got it, but we ended up having to wait a little longer for a transport nurse. Tony arrived about an hour after we did and the transport nurse was right behind him. She did a lot of looking and after consulting with us about the best place to put it, she got blood on the first try and was able to keep it in to use as an IV. Whew! That saved our precious boy (and his parents) a lot of tears. Mercy tried to get blood, but it clotted before the lab could get a look at it. The neurosurgeons came in to tell us that his labs looked good, but they still wanted to do a shunt tap. It's the same thing as a spinal tap except that they place the needle in the shunt to get the spinal fulid. Hopefully, that is less painful for Hayden. Even though I knew that I was doing what was best for Hayden, my heart broke as he screamed while I held him down tightly. When you have a needle stuck in your head it is really important that you keep it still. Luckliy, that came back clean, too. Last year, Hayden's shunt infection was found only in his spinal fluid. Neurosurgery decided to give him a break and to admit us for more tests on Wednesday. About 6am today, we were finally put into a room. Tony and I did the best we could to get comfortable in the chairs in Hayden's room and get some sleep. By this point, I had been up for over 24 hours and haden't eaten in about 20 hours. We got maybe 30 minutes of sleep today.


About 7 am Dr. Lindley (the neurosurgeon) came in and said that he wanted to do a shuntogram to see if the shunt is obstructed. He cautioned that this test doesn't always give a clear cut answer. He said that if the shuntogram is inconclusive, we would need to decide if we would want to do exploratory surgery to take a look at the shunt to know for certain if it is working as it should. Instead of deciding what we wanted to do, Tony and I decided to have faith that the test would be conclusive. That was a decision that we really did not want to make. How do you make a decision like that?