My sanity is wearing thin...

So I know I am a few days late updating this but lets just say this week has been a little crazy around our house. After C.J. (our youngest) sticking a bead up his nose, the ER failing to get it out, a trip to the ENT and finally ending up in surgery Tuesday was an extremely busy day. We got to the ENT at around 11:30, he looked up C.J.'s nose and the bead was still there, but was just back far enough he couldn't safely get it in his office so he scheduled surgery for 2:30 that afternoon. We finally get everything scheduled, doc took one more look up his nose to get a good idea of where the bead was and he said he could see it lodged in between the nasal septum, we left his office a little after 1. Show up at the hospital for the surgery and doc comes in and tells us that everything should go pretty quick he thinks that once they give him a little gas they will be able to reach up there, grab the bead and wake him back up, shouldn't take over 10 min from start to finish. So when it was an hour later and we still hadn't seen the doctor, and they hadn't came out to get us, I knew something went wrong. A little over an hour later the doctor finally comes out and tells us that when they put C.J. under, and looked up his nose to grab the bead, it was gone. They couldn't find it and were extremely worried that he may have aspirated it. So they ended up scoping his sinuses, bronchial tubes, both lungs and his esophagus, looking for this dang bead. It was never found but they kept him for an hour after he came out of anesthesia to make sure his oxygen levels stayed up, and then did a chest xray, and finally sent us home. I think between all the stress from the day and the barometric pressure(that is not a friend to Katana's head) she ended up with a severe headache at 3 o'clock Wednesday morning. Chris and I both sat straight up in bed to her screaming in pain, upon bringing her down stairs we realized she had a fever, which with Katana happens occasionally for no known reason. When she woke up Wednesday morning she was all better, her headache and fever were both gone and even though she seemed to have a little headache off and on through out yesterday it never got as bad as it was at 3am. So we ended our streak of no severe headaches but I will gladly take one in 7 weeks compared to the 4-5 a week we were having before. Now I am just hoping for a nice relaxing weekend with no excitement to get everyone ready to go back to school Monday, and hopefully repair some of mommy's sanity. lol

7 weeks baby...

Well seven weeks without a severe headache. We are so excited that the weeks keep ticking by with such great success. I find my self praying daily that this trend continues for a long time. I will gladly count the weeks she lives without a headache.

Now normally I keep this blog about Katana and our journey in hydrocephalus but tonight my four year old, "The Moose" stuck a bead up his nose. Normally things up the nose don't worry me to much a pair of tweezers and an extra pair of hands and Mom can handle anything. But tonight I couldn't even imagine getting it out with tweezers. It was SO FAR up there that it took me a few min to even see it up there. So after a trip to ER and three tries by the doctor they couldn't even get it out. So tomorrow we head to Hutchinson to an ENT to see if they can get it out. If not we may be looking at surgery to get it out. He thought it was all fun and games until they had to try to get it out. Then he finally decided it wasn't fun anymore. Finally after all of that he now says "I don't stick things up my nose". So I guess it is a lesson learned. I swear my boys give me a run for my money. So tomorrow we will head off to the ENT to pray he can grab the the bead and get pull it out without to much trauma. All prayers for a successful bead removal would be appreciated. I swear my life as a mom never boring, but I love my kids and wouldn't have it any other way.

Moving on up.....

Well after parent teacher conferences yesterday, Katana's teacher thinks she is going to be ready to move on to Kindergarten next year. She has progressed so much that her teacher doesn't think there will be any worries with her going on. She also told us that Kat has become a mentor to one of the kids in her class. She helps him find pages in their books, helps him stay on track, and helps remind him of the rules. I am so proud of her. She is doing so great. She also passed the 6 week mark with no headaches. This week has just been a great week. :)

A lesson in our new life...

So yesterday Katana reached 5 weeks with no severe headaches. She has started to complain of little headaches if she lays down flat to long (more than about 30 min). When I say little headaches I mean she looks at me and says "Mom my head hurts." Then she goes back to doing what ever it is she was doing. So we started trying to figure out what is causing these little headaches. My first thought was sinus junk that has been going around, but then I realized it they were only showing up when she was laying flat. So we tried elevating her head when she is laying down to see if maybe she was stopping her shunt when she was laying flat which was causing pressure to build up. We have tried having her sleep on her bean bag the last few days and that has sent these little headaches packing. So while I can't say that she is 100% headache free I can say that she is still doing so much better than before her shunt replacement. These new headaches are nothing compared to what she had with her old shunt. She has no light sensitivity, no noise sensitivity, and no nausea or vomiting. These headaches didn't stop her and put her in bed half the day. They didn't make her cry and didn't make her curl up in ball and hide in a dark room. They don't interfere with her being a normal kid.

After spending some time thinking about these headaches I realized that we really don't know how Katana functions with a properly working shunt. They think that Katana's shunt had been broken since 2008, when her ventricles were first noted to be "slit-like" (or in layman term smaller than they should be). In 2008 Katana was 2 and had just started to talk. So we have no idea what her body does with a shunt that works. It can be normal for some people with hydrocephalus to not be comfortable lying flat. So for all we know this is Katana's normal. Which I will gladly take over the hell we have been through the last 4 years.

So I guess we have a lot of lesson to learn now that Katana has a working shunt. She is all of a sudden a typical 5 (almost 6) year old. She goes 100 miles an hour from the second she gets out of bed until she crashes at bedtime. She has a ton of energy, a smile on her face all the time, and finally she is not having constant pain. I honestly don't think we all realized how much her shunt was affecting her life. Her valve had been broken for so long that we had become accustomed to her being in pain all the time. Now she rarely complains of any type of pain unless she lays flat for to long. She is just a totally different little girl than she was 6 weeks ago. She is so full of life!! I love our new life!! Her being a typical kid is worth all the insanity it causes me.