Long Day Good News

Well, we had a marathon of a day today.

We were up at the break of dawn for medicine and a little apple juice; I, quite rudely, had some breakfast, and then we went off to the hospital for a CT scan and a visit with the neurosurgeon. Since Charlie is older, they wanted him to be sedated for the scan. I thought this was ridiculous, but I couldn't convince anyone else of that. So, we showed up at the Same Day Surgery Center (crazy, no?), signed in, waited an hour, and got processed, which took another hour. They gave Charlie some medicine to relax--he was asleep at this point--and then whisked him away to radiology.

Forty-five minutes later they came and got me and I went to see him in "recovery." Again, ridiculous. He was grumpy, but fine, and quickly took down a five ounce bottle. We sat around for another forty-five minutes so her could "recover," and then they released us.

We went and got a sandwich and then drove through a monsoon back to the hospital to meet with the doctor and discuss the results. We got done with everything around three and I still had to drive over an hour to get home.

The news is all good. Charlie's shunt is in place and working properly. His ventricles are smaller than they were in December. Additionally, his head circumference has increased slightly since then. This means his brain is growing!!!! That's my guy: learning new things every day.

Speaking of which, Charlie is learning how to turn pages in a book. Also, his teacher is interested in helping him communicate since his speech is delayed. I don't know what she has in mind, but that will sure be interesting.