Surgery Update!

Okay, day number 7 in the hospital, this definatly ended up being a longer stay than antisipated. Here is the deal, when I came in last Wednesday to have the shunt tied off and the ICP monitor put in, things ended up changing. He ended up tying off my shunt and monitoring my pressure from the shunt site. My pressure was high, in the 40's to 60's at some points (a normal persons pressure is about 12), so needless to say, my body could not handle it and I was in agony, I was throwing up ALOT, they gave me every anti nausea medicine known to man through my IV, but nothing stopped it, this continued for 5 days. Monday I was set to go back into surgery, the plan was to do a procedure called ETV (basically drilling a hole through your skull, brain and putting a small whole in the third ventricle of the brain) This would allow for the CSF fluid to have somewhere to go. After this procedure, I would be in the ICU for a day or two and be sent home in three days or so. They plan was to come back in two weeks for me to get the VP shunt (the shunt put in my brain) The risk of infection was to high to do both procedures on the same day, along with having just done the LP shunt surgery. I was sent to get a CT scan right before going to the operating room with little life saver sticky things all over my head, I guess kinda a road map for the doctor when he gets to drilling. He decided at the last minute after seeing my CT scan that doing the ETV procedure was to risky because my ventricles were calapsed from the high pressure, so he went ahead and put in the VP shunt. I have to say, I have been through 12 surgeries now and natural childbirth twice with no drugs or epidural and the pain I encountered last night was worse than all the others combined. I have no hair :( , I have 2 incision sites in my head, my neck hurts REALLY bad from where he fed the tubing down to my abdomin. He also decided to go in yesterday and completly remove my old shunt, so I also have my back sliced open and my abdomin. The Dr. came to see me this morning and told me that it was a really rough surgery, the surgery was supposed to take about an hour and it took almost 4 hours, he seems very confident that this will help me, he is doing everything he can to try to keep me from having to have the decompression surgery, he feels that the decompression surgery is a really risky sugery and doesn't always turn out the way it should. To say the least it has been a very painfull day. We are hoping that I will be able to come home Thursday or Friday, I don't know though, my blood pressure is really low and I am now running a fever, I just pray that it is not a shunt infection, that will be really really bad!! I have to say, that Dr. Rigamonti and his team are excellent. Everyone up here at Johns Hopkins has been so nice. I will keep you updated on when I come home. Thank everyone for the prayers!!