After hearing reports on Sunday of Tyler's A's and B's clustering and taking a lot of stimulation for him to come back, I thought he would be definitely going to surgery today for a shunt. Yesterday when we got here, we started to hear there was a second bleed in his left ventricle. So we started to think maybe we've waiting too long and the pressure with Sunday's episodes caused another bleed. Ok go to surgery and release that pressure. We also noticed his head circumference was down 1/2 cm from Sunday to Monday. We attribute that to measurement error. Getting a head measurement on a squrimming baby is more of an art than science.
Today after a sleepless night of wondering if we waited too long, we were greeted with his head has SHRUNK another 1/2 cm. His nurse checked it like 12 times, the nurse practitioner measured another dozen times, and the pediatric surgeon came up and also measured. His head has shrunk a full cm since Sunday. Ummm hold the phone.
We had yesterday's ultrasound reread today by the pediatric radiologist. They don't see a new bleed. They also said the ventricles look smaller!?!?! Now what do we do? How do we explain Sunday?
The attending Dr is of the opinion we wait some more. If the ventricles are starting to decrease let's see where this leads us. Shrinking ventricles doesn't mean the shunt is completely off the table. The dissolving clots can re-clogged the area again and cause the ventricles to swell. Installing the shunt to soon may rob the body a chance to remedy this problem on it's own. There is a definite balancing act here.
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