Long Day of Appointments Part 2

That last message sent before I meant it to.

Dr. Hung wants us to go ahead and get Jack fitted for some ear plugs too. He wants Jack to wear them even in the bath tub.

Dr. Hung said if these measures don't stop the infections he may remove Jack's ear tubes and replace them with a tube made of a different material. He said that some people actually react to something in the tube that creates these chronic cycles. Also, he said that the tubes themselves are probably colonized with bacteria and taking the tubes out and rinsing the ears with an antibiotic solution may take care of it all.

We were encouraged that he seems to believe that we can resolve this chronic cycle medically.

Our final appointment of the day was with Dr. Price, the neurosurgeon. We got good news there too. She was very happy with the MRI. She had it all ready for us to review. There is a remarkable difference between 2007 and now. The ventricles are so much smaller. Compared to last February, the ventricles are slightly smaller. Jack's head circumference is exactly the same as last February but he is 18 month's older so the gap between Jack's head circumference and the growth chart is getting smaller. Jack has no chiari malformation (a condition which occurs when increased pressure causes a portion of the brain stem to be pushed into the spinal canal). All of this means that Jack's VP shunt is doing it's job.

Jack still has a large cranial defect on his right temple. Dr. Price says that she may close that up in a future surgery but she does not feel that it is necessary to do surgery for that alone.

We'll see Dr. Fearon tomorrow and get his take on everything.

It's been a long, tiring but very good day.

Jack was so great with the whole day. He said he wanted chicken for dinner. We stopped at the first chicken place and got that big boy some chicken.