Parker Mason Brown Update

Happy Labor Day Weekend!  Hopefully everyone is having a safe and enjoyable weekend.  This time of year is always exciting with the start of football & hunting season.  Now we can add the planning and celebration of Parker's Birthday to the excitement.  Leah is in party planning mode and Parker's 1st Birthday will be awesome!

This post is long overdue and I appreciate all of the encouragement to keep this updated.  Parker is a trooper and he continues to amaze us with how he deals with adversity.  Parker's nanny, Chessa, got married in May and Parker's doctors gave him clearance to go to daycare.  The folks at The Goddard School are awesome!  They love Parker to death and take great care of him.  As many of you may know, with daycare comes germs.  Parker went on a 4 month cycle of ear infections that became predictable......runny nose, congestion, double ear infection, antibiotics for 10 days, cleared up, runny nose within a week, congestion and the cycle starts again.  He went through 4 double ear infections between April and August.

The second ear infection started on June 15th when school called notifying of a 101 fever.  By the time I picked him up it spiked to 103.8.  Within 30 minutes of getting home he started seizing.  His seizure finally broke at St. Luke's after 2 hours and 4 different doses of emergency medications.  We transported to Texas Children's via ambulance where we spent the night in the ER and finally transferred to neurosurgery around 3am the next morning.

The good news was Parker had a febrile seizure (fever seizure) which is caused by a sharp rise in body temperature.  This type of seizure can effect anyone and is most common in children between 6 months and 5 years of age.  Epilepsy didn't cause the seizure, but it makes him more suceptable to these types of seizures.  The doctors diagnosed him with another ear infection and released us the next day.

2 ear infections later on August 15th, Parker woke up one morning with a pocket of fluid built up between his skin and his skull on the back of his head near his old shunt site.  Leah and I took him the ER @ Texas Children's where they couldn't diagnose the cause of the fluid build up.  They adjusted the flow on his programmable shunt to increase the fluid flow and released us from the hospital the same day.  The fluid build up continued to grow and which landed Parker back in the ER on August 22nd.  Again, they couldn't identify the cause.  They tapped his shunt to make sure it wasn't clogged (they do this by inserting a needle in the shunt and drawing out fluid manually) and then they increased the flow on his shunt again.  They released us the same day.

Neither time we were in the ER did we see Parker's neurosurgeon, so we scheduled a follow-up appointment the following Monday, August 27th.  Dr. Curry had an answer in about 5 minutes.  The CT Scan shows Parker still has a hole in his skull from his old shunt.  The pressure caused by Parker's crying during his fits of pain from the ear infections was forcing the fluid out of the old hole instead of the catheter.  This will naturally stop when the old hole heals and scars.  In the mean time, we need to keep him happy and upright.  Parker is extremely happy sitting in my lap trying to type on the keyboard right now and, as of this morning, the fluid is almost completely dissipated!

Parker's Pals are participating in the first annual Hydrocephalus Association Walk for Houston which is being held on September 29th.  We encourage anyone that would like to join our team for the walk or a donation to check out this link for Parker's Pal

March - 6 Months

April - 7 Months

June - 8 Months

July - 9 Months

August 10 - Months

Parker Mason Brown Emergency Surgery

I hope to get a more detailed blog post in this weekend, but here's a quick update.  Parker went to the ER on Thursday night at 10pm, and surgery Friday at 8pm.  The surgery ended at 10pm and we were admitted to the neurosurgery floor at Texas Children's at 10:30pm.

Parker was released on Saturday evening, yes he is a trooper.  Needless to say, the docs were pleased with their art work and Parker's attitude enough to release him 19 hours after brain surgery.

He's had a few painful spells, but we're close getting that under control.  I want to share something very encouraging.  I pick up all of Parker's ct scans and x-rays at the hospital's archives and I've put together a progression of the brain development over the last 6 months.

Below you will notice a few things.
1. Parker's brain is developing
2. The new shunt is on the top of the head now
3. If you look closely, the new shunt looks different than the old one because it is a programmable shunt

Parker is 5 months!

Parker is 5 months old today and he rolled over for the first time!  Now it's his favorite thing to do.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day!  Parker, Leah and I had a nice picnic together.

That's all for now.

Cheers,
Dave

Parker Mason Brown - Living the Good Life

This title of the post is best depicted by Parker's 4 month picture that Leah and I took yesterday.

Parker is seizure free for 4 weeks as of today!  He's growing at a normal pace according to our pediatrician, Dr. Parkerson, and he is the sweetest, happiest kiddo.  Leah enjoys the days back at the office with her co-workers and Parker enjoys his days with Chessa, his nanny.  Parker learns something new everyday, from slowly figuring out how to smile, laugh and jabber to quickly playing with his toys and figuring out that he has feet.

Leah and I went back and forth with our neurologist for a couple of weeks to get Parker medicated properly.  He takes 1 medication 3 times a day which is prescribed for typical epilepsy.  He takes another medication every morning, which will eventually be weened out.  That prescription immediately stopped the clusters of seizures he was having.  They believe that the fluid build up on the outside of the brain was causing the clusters, which the original medication wasn't intended to prevent.  I'm assuming that we will get rid of the second medication after the external fluid recesses.  Regardless, we are in a good spot.

We had one stint of sickness throughout the house that put Leah, Parker and myself all out of business for half of a week, but Parker was surprisingly content considering the circumstances.  Luckily we only took one quick trip to Dr. Parkerson to make sure everything was under control.  Since then, we've had his 4 month check up where he weighed 13.8 lbs and was in the 30th percentile in most categories in respect to 1 month preemie babies.  Obviously, his head is topping the regular charts, but that's too be expected.

Early Childhood Intervention, ECI, came out for an interview and will be supporting Parker with Physical Therapy at our house twice a month.  According to the standardized tests, he is testing as a 3 month old in regards to his fine motor skills and a new born when it comes to gross motor skills (primarily because the size of his head is holding him back from the next steps).  Parker didn't respond to them ringing a bell, which is the standardized test for cognitive ability, so he ranked as a new born there.  As the therapist was holding Parker, talking back and forth with him, making him laugh, ect...she told us that the standardized test for cognitive ability couldn't take into account for his ability to interact on this level and to take the results with a grain of salt.

The next 3 months will be busy with multiple appointments now that he's getting close to his 6 month mark.  We hope to have more information from the doctors about his vision, hearing, head shape, and status of the shunt.

Leah, Parker and I want to thank you all for the continued support and prayers.  We can't wait for him to meet more of you in 2012!!

Cheers,
Dave