endoscopic fenestration of the septum pellucidum

Nora is gearing up for her first stay in the hospital since leaving the NICU in January. In a few weeks she will be having brain surgery to allow the CSF (cerebral spinal fluid) in her right ventricle drain into her left ventricle and out of the brain where it is supposed to go. She will be at Bronson in Kalamazoo for a few days for the surgery then will take about a week to recover at home.

We have not yet scheduled the surgery as we are first going to get a second opinion from one of the pediatric neurosurgeons at the U of M. Assuming that they concur with the recommendation of Dr. Warder at Bronson, we will then schedule the surgery.

Although I am not too thrilled about her getting surgery, I am thankful that this procedure even exists. With all of my research, I didn't even know about it until Dr. Warder told us on Friday. This is a much better option than a shunt. There is a likelihood that she will have to have it done again once or twice if her brain heals over the hole that is cut in the septum pellucidum (membrane that separates the two halves of the brain), but that is better than a shunt still. It is also possible that she will end up with a shunt anyway at some point; but this surgery could at least allow us to delay that for a couple of years.

We will keep you updates as I get more news and get the surgery scheduled.

Nora's First September

Nora is 9 months now and at 18.9 lbs and 28 3/4 inches, I think we can say she has caught up after her low birth weight. I was about the same weight at her age and Andy was about the same length. (I was longer and Andy was heavier).

She has been a busy girl the last month with a vacation at Grandma & Grandpa Vought's house while we were relaxing in Mexico and a weekend stay at Grandma & Grandpa Forester's cottage at Houghton Lake.

Here is a recent bathtime playing with Andy. If you are reading this on my facebook feed - you have to go to http://www.noraforester.blogspot.com/ (If anyone knows a solution to this, let me know. I don't want to upload the videos to FB since it takes too long at home and I can't access FB at work.)

Nora is doing really well at her therapies. She is sitting really well now and is working on crawling. She starts Music Therapy soon which should be interesting. I always wondered what those Music Therapy majors were doing with their time in college - I will let you know what I find out.

She will make a visit to the neurosurgeon this week - we have met him before when she was in the NICU. He is going to let us know his opinion on what is going on with her brain. She had an MRI in August that showed some changes from her last scan in December. We will see what he has to say, but my guess is that she will just need to get MRIs occasionally to watch the development of the brain and monitoring for symptoms of pressure on her brain (which she has none now). I am not sure that there is any real surgical option at this point to be considered. Of course, this is just my guess and I should have learned by now to not have any real expectations but just take what comes...