Silly little boy.....

These pictures kill me! Especially the middle one. It looks like he was dancing to Madonna's Vogue song or something!

Anyway...Colby's doing well. We had trouble feeding him yesterday. He just didn't want anything to eat. He slept right through the night and woke this morning with one heck of an appetite. So all seems to be back to normal!

We're heading out today as it's a relatively warm day for CT in December and meeting a couple friends for a cup of coffee. We love to bring Colby out and expose him to new things. Now that it's the cold and flu season, we have to be cautious of where he goes and who touches him, but to keep him on our lap and let him look around and see new things is great.

Welcome back home Colby!

Colby got discharged from the hospital this morning. He and Tracey arrived home around 11 today. He's back to his ol' self again which makes us very happy! We're tired now, more than when we was in the hospital. I think we run on adrenalin then once things slow down, we crash. So Colby just went down for a nap, Tracey and I are going to do the same.

Above are pictures of Colby and his Neurosurgeon, Dr Kanev. He's a great man. You can tell he's the kind of person that truly enjoys what he does. You have a profound impact on people's lives, Dr Kanev. We thank you so much for all you've done for Colby and our family!!!

He's back...

(Colby's right hand has his IV in it and is taped to a small board to keep it straight. He was putting the tubes in his mouth and chewing on them, so we had to put a sock on his hand to keep him from messing with it. LOL. He tried to play with his toys with both hands but was at a bit of a loss of what to do with his right hand as it wasn't of much use.)

(Colby playing with some toys that Santa brought for him)

("Daddy....can I go home now?")

...to normal! I was thrilled to enter his room tonight and see him much more like his old self. He played, smiled, babbled, drooled....all the normal Colby stuff! It's amazing what a difference a couple hours can make. So Tracey is staying at the hospital with him tonight. I'm home and in need of a good night's sleep. I fully expect Colby to come home mid day tomorrow. Above are a bunch of pictures from tonight.

Thank all of you for your support, comments, e-mails, phone calls...you name it! You can't understand what that means to us to have the support we do. Colby is a lucky boy to have such a great group of people following his journey and supporting him!

Would you like an extra night's stay?

Once Tracey came into the hospital to stay with Colby, I had every intent of coming home, getting something to eat, lying in bed and updating the blog. Well...I got as far as lying in bed. I was out like a light.
Tracey got into the hospital around noon. I honestly don't recall what time it was. We stayed together in his room for a bit, but I was tired and poor Colby was one unhappy camper. He had another fever and was boarder line miserable. They gave him some more Tylonol and then I headed out to come home and get some rest.
I just woke up and called Tracey. Colby seems to be doing much better. The doctors looked at him and said that it's a toss up. He could come home or they could keep him another night. Given the fact that he started to get better twice only to see him digress, we decided to have him stay and be observed for one more night. He is eating, though I'm not sure how much.
So I'm going to try to wake up a little, feed Hamilton and then head back into the hospital. Whenever I get home I'll have some pictures of our little boy to post. We're hoping that this time tomorrow, we'll all be back home together.

Ups and downs

Over the past couple hours, Colby has started to digress a bit again. He's becoming very cranky, refuses to eat, feels warm but doens't have a temp. He's just turning miserable again. He'll nap for a couple minutes, then wake up and cry, then fall back asleep. His heart rate has been high, around 140 to 150 ever since he came out of his last surgery. He doesn't really want to be held, but doesn't seem content to be lying in bed either. The nuerosurgeon is in the OR right now but will come up when he's out.

Day 3

(Colby looking at one of his X-mas presents (thanks Chloe and Caitlin). We tried to have a bit of a Christmas here last night, but Colby was not at all interested in much and Tracey was exhausted)(Here's our boy last night, getting some rest.)

(You can see the tape on the top of his head. Apart from that, there's no signs of his surgery as they didn't need to mess with the drainage tube in his belly)

(And here he is this morning, sitting up and more alert. He loves his Pirate Booty. He's definitely right handed, but with the board on his right hand, he was forced to use his left.)

Last night went pretty well. Colby didn't really cry, more of a moaning and whimpering most of the night. He had a mild fever around 1am and I think his belly was bothering him some. He would take longer naps for about an hour or more a couple times during the night. This morning found him doing a little better, a little livelier. He was playing with some stuffed animals and ate some pirate booty. He continues to whimper a lot and doesn't want anything to do with his bottle. I'm trying to stay quiet and let him rest.

The doctors came in around 8:30 this morning to look at him. They said he looked good and if he can just regain his appetite, he may be able to go home today. They will come back in around mid day to re-evaluate him.

Tracey is on her way into the hospital. She needed to drop Evan off at his dad's. Once she gets in, I'll visit with her for a bit then head home to get some rest.

Nothing too much more to report right now.

Ventricles, hydrocephalus and shunts: 101

I Googled ventricles and came up with a couple pictures for everyone so that you can better understand what's happening with Colby. The two pictures above are both of the brain and both illustrate the ventricular system. The flow of fluid is essentially from top to bottom. In Colby's case, the third ventricle isn't draining into the forth and thus there's a build up of pressure. This buildup is called Hydrocephalus. His Lateral ventricles are larger than what you see in the pictures above. When his shunt isn't working, the pressure builds, enlarging his ventricles and pushing his brain against his skull. The pressure on the brain causes irritability and vomiting among other things. This is exactly what's happened these past couple weeks.

This picture shows how a shunt is placed to go into the ventricle and allow fluid to drain out the top, down a tube which is placed just under the skin and drain into the belly. The pink or purple thing on the top of the shunt is a valve to allow fluid to drain, but not allow fluid into the brain. In Colby's case, he had a shunt on the left side of his head for the past 10 months and just today, they removed that from his head and placed one on the right side to access that ventricle in hopes that it would allow for better drainage. The shunt still connects to the same tube his old shunt used to then drain down into his belly. I can't really tell what the top of his head looks like as it's all covered in tape.

I hope this helps to explain things a bit.