Look, Mom! No Turban!

Victoria having a little snooze the evening after her surgery.

Victoria's shunt replacement surgery yesterday was moved earlier by 1 hour, so by 9:45, the nurse upstairs was washing her hair.  She was brought into the OR about 11:00 am, and by 11:30 they had begun the surgery.  Victoria actually had two doctors for this surgery, because they knew she had some adhesions...likely from the infected CSF...and did not know if they would cause some trouble with finding a good place for the drain.  So the neurosurgeon did the shunt placement, and another ped doctor, who works a lot in the abdominal area did the stuff in the abdominal area.  My beeper went off at about 11:55, and I thought it was a little early...maybe they were going to tell me that it was going to take longer than planned.
Thankfully, the opposite was true.  They had not run into any big issues with adhesions, and the surgery was done.  About an hour later, they brought her back up to the 7th floor.  They had extubated her down in recovery...she had used high flow O2 for a few minutes...then did fine on her own.  She came back up breathing completely on her own.  Her digestive system began functioning again by evening, and they started to give her milk again through her g tube.  They are also giving her some nutrition through an IV, but that is decreasing, as the stomach feeds are increasing.  Victoria had been doing really well since the surgery, and we are looking forward to thinking about home before too long.

What is left to go?  Upping feedings, and making sure that her stomach is able to handle them, watching the shunt to make sure the setting is acceptable for Victoria's flow rate, starting a little PT to help get back her muscle tone which was lost during the last 6 weeks. I've also been learning to use the g-tube.  I was able to give her a little milk today orally with a syringe...and she did enjoy it.  Every day we are getting closer to home, and I am SO thankful!!!


For those of you who have been praying for Noah...his mom came up yesterday for a little encouragement.  He was being extubated after 11 days on the vent, and she was a little worried about it.  He had a hard time with it at first, but when I talked with her today, he was starting to do better with it.  He still has a little ways to go, but this was an important step for him.