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
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