Good News/Bad News

First the good news. Friday we took Vince in for an EEG and a follow-up with the Neurologist. The EEG was to check his brain activity to see if we could start weening him off of his seizure medication. The doctor checked the results and said that his brain activity looked to be back to normal and said that we could start reducing his dosage and be off of the medication in about a month. That was really great to hear.

Then came the bad news. She had noticed that Vince's head circumference measurements had increased more than normal since his last appointment there. She then saw that his eyes didn't move up without moving his head up to look at objects. She said that these could be signs of a shunt malfunction even though we had not seeen any of the typical signs that we are supposed to look for. She thought that there might be a blockage in the shunt that is not allowing the fluid to circulate properly so it is building up in his brain and that it would eventually get to the point where we would have seen other symptoms but it hadn't gotten that bad yet. She sent us down for a CT scan to verify and it showed that his ventricles were enlarged and that he would need surgery to replace his shunt. So we are going in on Monday morning to meet with the Neurosurgeon and Vince will most likely have the surgery on Monday. It's good that they caught it early, but it really took us off guard because he was not showing any of the symptoms of shunt failure.

We'll post updates after the surgery to let you know how he's doing.

Love,
Nick, Andrea and Vince