Day +78

Just the facts, Ma'am:

Zoe goes in for surgery tomorrow to have a shunt put into her head to enable her brain to drain the cerebral spinal fluid it's obviously not able to deal with on its own. We check into the hospital at 11:30am, her surgery is at 3:30pm.

They don't know why her brain is doing this, but likely it's due to fall-out from the surgery and possibly the effects of the chemo from her transplant pre-conditioning.

The surgery will take approximately an hour. The neurosurgeon will install the tube that will go from the ventricles in her brain, stretching down to her abdominal cavity where the extra fluid will be diverted and absorbed. There will be a programmable valve installed that will be controlled via a special magnet.

Zoe will likely have the shunt for the rest of her life.

A different neurosurgeon (Browd) than the one (Avellino) who worked on her last November will be Zoe's doctor. Avellino has taken a position at the UW Medical center and is no longer treating children. Cunningham assures us that Browd is very good at what he does.

Risk of infection for this procedure stands at 5% of all of the shunt installations they do due to the fact that hardware placement is involved. Anytime hardware is introduced into the body the risk of infection increases.

As Zoe is immunocompromised she will be checking into the SCCA unit prior to tomorrow's surgery and will be returned to the unit after the procedure.

The hospital stay for normal kids usually is a day past the surgery, but as Zoe is "special", we know this may not be the case for her.

This will be the fourth time we will be handing her over to anesthesiologists for a surgical procedure, and it hasn't gotten any easier. While we are necessarily becoming inured to this mind tilting medical saga, the underlying terror of potentially having our hearts ripped out is pretty much still a constant.

Zoe seems to enjoy marking her milestones in accordance to certain auspicious days: Her birthday fell on "Epiphany Day" in the Catholic religion that celebrates the arrival of the Magi to visit the baby Jesus. Her skull surgery date of November 6th was presided over by the patron saint Winnoc who had cured a blind man. Her transplant date was the day before the historical swearing in of our first African American President, and her shunt will be going in on Good Friday. If you follow that sort of thing. I find it all interesting, but don't give it much portentive weight.

Oof, tired--off to bed...