Quick Health Update

I took Evan to his head ultrasound today. Long story short, no shunt yet! His ventricles have remained stable and, dare I say, maybe even shrunk a little bit?! We'll (always) continue monitoring and take him back in 2 weeks for another check-up and ultrasound. It's good to know he's on a close watch with the neurosurgeons at Primary Children's.

We also got really positive news from Orthopedics today. The doctor checked out Evan's past hip ultrasound and confirmed his hips look like they're in place. He felt Evan's hips and said they feel pretty secure now so I imagine we won't have any problems with them in the future. He also checked out Evan's feet and said he thinks they are positionally clubbed and can be fixed just by stretching them every day. He doesn't think they'll need casting or surgery like we expected. He also said this is the point where parents usually ask, "What will my child be able to do when he's 15? Walk? Play sports?" He said the biggest indicator or future mobility is the quads, and Evan's got great quads! The doctor said it's not a matter of if he can walk--the only question is if he'll need braces to help him. From an orthopedics standpoint Evan looks awesome!

When we got home from the doctor's I took off Evan's wound dressing and his cardio-respiratory monitor leads. For the first time EVER (except the first minute of his life) he was an accessory-free baby. No gauze, no tape, no wires, no tubes, no nothing. It was an overwhelming great feeling to hold just my baby.

Then I got a call from the Pulmonologist. We've been waiting for his call with the results from Evan's sleep study (when he was hooked up to a pulse oximeter to track his oxygen saturation while he was off oxygen for a night). We wanted to be justified for keeping the oxygen off even after the study was finished. He said the results were...slightly abnormal. Oh boy. I guess for 4% of the time Evan's oxygen saturation was in the 70's and 80's. That's just bad enough that the doctor doesn't feel comfortable recommending Evan to be off oxygen. He wants us to keep him on it and repeat the study in early February. I was really really disappointed. I'm glad, though, of all the negative news we could've received today, that the oxygen was the worst of it. Oxygen is just temporary--even if it's a few months longer than anticipated. It's just ironic to me that we were concerned about Spina Bifida but the only thing we're dealing with right now is oxygen--and that isn't even related to Spina Bifida.

We celebrated Evan's last moments of freedom by taking his first ever real bath. He hated it.