Just a quick update to follow up on last week's MRI and give a little news about Silas's health and our trip to Ventura and Santa Barbara this weekend. This is the last week of summer for dad, whose fall quarter starts on Monday, so this might be the last update for a few weeks until thing settle down.
Good News: MRI Results
First, some good news about Silas's MRI. Today we got the radiologist's report from Silas's appointment last week, and we're happy to report that his MRI showed that there has been interval decompressive suboccipital craniectomy with resection of the posterior arch of C1. Since we have no idea what this and most of the rest of the report actually means, we were glad to get a call tonight from Silas's neurosurgeon who looked over the images from the MRI and read the radiologist's report and said he was very happy with Silas's results.
The decompression appears to be working. Silas's ventriculomegaly (hydrocephalus) is looking much better in his lateral and third ventricles and his CSF appears to be flowing much better than before. The 'knuckle' that was jutting into his cranial nerves and causing his vocal cord paralysis is now gone and there is much more room for his brain stem to grow. The radiologist noted a slightly longer syringohydromyelia, but Silas's neurosurgeon found it to be consistent with Silas's overall growth and not a cause for any concern. In short, he was very encouraged by what he saw. The best proof that of the success of his surgery is that he is doing much better clinically. The MRI was routine and basically just to have a new baseline for Silas's brain as he moves ahead. Thankfully, they didn't find any new problems, and Silas's progress appears steady. His next MRI will be in another six months. So far so good.
More Good News: Silas is Gaining Weight
We also got another piece of good news today. We brought Silas in to his pediatrician's office to get an official weight, and he is now 18 lbs, 2 oz. That's more than a pound of weight gain since August 1st, when he was just shy of 17 lbs, and enough to put him back on the charts for his age. He's still somewhere just above the fifth percentile for a 10-month-old, but we're thankful this progress in such a short amount of time.
Silas only throws up a couple of bottles a day now (most often his first and last bottles of the day), which is a huge improvement over earlier this summer. The volume of his throw-up is significantly reduced. He is sleeping much better at night now and even starting to take a couple of short naps during the day. A big part of this improvement seems to be related to his more regular metabolism since he went on Miralax last month, but several factors changed in the last few weeks so it's difficult to identify a single cause. He is breathing better, coughing less, vocalizing more, getting more humidity at night, getting more rest, and de-satting less at night (in fact, his pulse oxymeter rarely alarms anymore). In short, Silas's health has dramatically improved in the last few weeks, and he's finally starting to gain weight, which is wonderful news. There's still some room for improvement, but we're delighted with the progress so far.
Next Monday he will have an upper G.I. study in the morning at UCSF and an appointment with his pediatric ENT surgeon in the afternoon. Then in October, we'll be back in San Francisco for a sleep study.
Trip to Santa Barbara
So, after we killed our tenth black widow outside our new house, we decided that our sweeping and caulking approach to pest management was proving ineffective, so we broke down and called the pest control company out to spray the place (just the outside). We were blessed to find a house that did not need to be tented for termites, but one down side has been a high population of other creepy crawly things outside our doors. We spend a lot of time on our patio with baby and started getting a little tired of sharing it with spiders. But since bug spray can be toxic for both spiders and babies, we cleared out of the house for the weekend to let the fumes dissipate and took a ride down south a few hours to Ventura and Santa Barbara. We had a fantastic time visiting the Hodges in Goleta and seeing the Santa Barbara Zoo (more pictures to come).
