Peanut's Head

Yesterday morning we took Peanut to have his head worked on. His head is very misshapen and even though the pedi might not want to be concerned about it yet, we don't see the point in waiting to help him get it back to the correct shape.

During the exam the doctor pointed out a bulge in his soft spot. This pretty much set off the alarm bells in our heads because Peanut's head circumference is huge. That doctor was kind enough to measure and plot it and his head circumference is well above the 100th percentile. So to recap we have 'big head' & 'bulging soft spot'. Of course the first thing that came to our minds was hydrocephalus. We discussed this revelation all day, made an appointment with the pedi for the next day (today) and just kept discussing.

We came to the conclusion that if there was any possibility of our child having hydrocephalus it couldn't wait. Going to the pedi was going to give us the same conclusion: his head needs to be evaluated. Then we would call for the referral and get an appointment in probably a good 3-4 months or longer. By the time we'd actually have answers several months would have passed. That just wasn't acceptable when you're talking about my child's brain!

We also easily decided that if we were going to go the Emergency Room route, it had to be a pediatric hospital so that it was pediatric specialists that were seeing him.

So off we went, leaving Little Man at my parents house to play with Diva and we headed to Texas Children's Hospital in the Medical Center. UGH! is all I can say for this country's healthcare situation. Especially in pediatrics because there just aren't enough physicians to go around.

I'll spare you the complaints of the ER and skip to the important stuff: According to the CT Scan they did, it's not hydrocephalus. The neurosurgeon did say that he has more fluid up there in the head than he should have. Initially the plan was to keep us in observation until morning when the neurosurgeon could come meet us, examine him and discuss the situation. They were talking about chalking it up to prematurity, following him closely and letting us go home after seeing the neurosurgeon.

Then this morning came and the plan changed. We weren't able to see the head neurosurgeon because he ended up in surgery. But he did look at the pictures and reports from his scan and determined we needed to stay, have an MRI done and figure out what is going on.

We weren't able to have the MRI done today but have been told, "first thing tomorrow morning." We'll see if their definition is the same as ours, hahaha. The hope is that the MRI will tell us what kind of fluid is surrounding his brain, why it's there and what we should do about it.

Until then, we wait.

I'll keep you posted and you keep the prayers coming!

PS: this means Peanut is missing his first snowfall. Can you believe how much it's snowing here right now? Good grief! Go Home Jack Frost!!!! lol.

The Numbers Are In!

Total cost for a 29 day NICU stay...$55K. That doesn't include any doctors charges, tests, etc. That is strictly to stay there. Although I'm pretty sure without looking over the details it does include his medications. All told this little adventure was well over $100K. Thank goodness for insurance! :)

Speaking of Peanut he's going to have an upper GI done on Friday. That doesn't particularly make either of us happy but his reflux is getting worse...not better. Little Man had one done and we felt so bad for him strapped to the board. Hopefully Peanut will just think he's being swaddled since he's so young.

I went ahead and attempted to take some pictures today. I can always upload it/them to multiple sites and buy a package instead of driving all the way to BFE to have pics done & then again to pick them up.

After I took some pictures of Peanut I remembered I had matching tops for the boys and figured I should go ahead and take pictures of them while I had things set up. I've been learning a program and tweaked a few of them with that. You'll have to let me know what you think of my first attempts here.

Here is his "official" 2 month picture...if you want to call it that.

And a few more:

It was really funny because Little Man is a bit funny about Peanut being ON him. He really doesn't know what to think of it and doesn't really like Peanut touching him. There was no way he was going to be able to hold Peanut up.

I'll be uploading these to the online photo album today or tomorrow (my head hurts) so that you can save them if you like. These are very low quality for the sake of posting them here.