Wynnie's new surgery date is now scheduled for Monday 12/10. After going in yesterday afternoon to discuss the MRI results, we discovered that Wynnie's blockage in his brain wasn't in the spot Dr Sacco thought it would be. Doing things as expected or "normal" would be too boring for Wynnie, he likes to play "stump the doctor" and he's really good. :)
As you'll see in the picture here, Wynnie's blockage is instead down at the bottom of his cerebellum. Before examining the MRI we thought Wynnie would get the EVT procedure (drill a hole at the bottom of his head) to help his body naturally drain out the cerebrospinal fluid. But since the blockage is in a new spot, an EVT would be roughly 75% effective... vs inserting a Shunt would be virtually 100% effective at draining.
What's a shunt? It's a small flexible plastic tube & valve inserted into the CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) system that creates a new drain for the CSF fluid to empty out into the body. The picture shows it pretty good. It's a little more involved of a process but it's also a "24-hr hospital stay" procedure that could have him home by Tuesday afternoon as all goes as planned. The vast majority of infants/children that have shunts have no problems with them and they can stay in there for life without any major maintenance.
After all of this... Chris and I know we should have gone to medical school... this stuff is all pretty fascinating. There are no do-overs so now it's time to put major pressure on Ben and Alex to go to med school so we can live vicariously through them! ha ha!!
Thanks everyone for staying up to date with us and sending us so many kind encouraging words, offering up prayers and just being there! We are very blessed to have such a caring group of friends and family that have been there with us since day 1... we'll keep you posted on Monday to let you know how Wynnie does on his big day.
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