Later Greg and I went to call our parents. I couldn't talk for crying, so he had to give them the details. He knew them better at that point anyway. After calling our parents we took a walk down the hall. I had to go to the bathroom. When I went inside, I locked the door, and slid to the floor crying my heart out. I was asking God why her? Why this innocent child? And praying for a miracle for my precious baby girl. This was also my private moment of grieving. I was grieving for that perfect child that I had lost, and for what was to come. I had no idea at this point what my baby would be able to do in the future. I'm not sure that I have told anyone that I did this, not even Greg. But he probably heard me, even though in this moment I was trying to be quiet and unheard.
The next morning August 13,(FRIDAY)1993 --After very little sleep (once again) in the little waiting room off of the PICU, we woke up and checked on Arielle. The nurses were so good about letting us come and go as we pleased. The doctors came in and checked her and by 9 am they had whisked her down to do the MRI. Greg and I went to. And as you would suspect Arielle was not too happy about the MRI. She would not cooperate for them. Can't say that I blame her that thing sounded like a jackhammer. They had to call in the PICU doctor that had admitted her to give her some valium. They took so long we went to check to see if my mom and dad had arrived yet. We met them just as they had walked into the hospital doors. And seeing as we were all a nervous wreck, they took us out for breakfast. I couldn't eat, I just had a glass of tea. And watched other peoples children playing and kept wandering if I would get to see my little girl do those things. Would I get to see her crawl?, Would I get to see her walk, even run?, Would I get to see her play like those children were doing? Date? go to Prom? Graduate? get Married? Have children of her own? Yes, I was in tears the whole time as you can only imagine. When we got back to the hospital the MRI was finished, but the neurosurgeon was in surgery. So they wanted to wait until he saw the MRI before letting us know what was going on.
The doctor fresh from surgery (still had his scrubs on) came to tell us that Arielle definately had Hydrocephalus and the cause of it was that she had a cyst in her fourth ventricle (brain). He said it was too dangerous to remove the cyst because it was located near a lot of nerves. But that they could put in a shunt which should take care of the problem (piece of cake----his attitude). He said that the shunt was like re-routing her pipes. So by noon that day (it was emergency surgery, her doctor bumped several patients to get her in) she was in surgery. We nervously waited in the surgerical waiting room, while Greg tried several times (again) to get ahold of his parents. NO LUCK. They were keeping Ben and deemed it more important to keep him away from the hospital. They never gave it a thought that their son might need his parents at this time. Anyway, the doctor finally came out and told us that the surgery to place the VP shunt went well. And that we could see her soon. Mom asked if there was a chance that she would be retarded and he said no, because this was a different part of the brain. It was a question that I think we were all thinking. He said that she should be able to do most anything that other babies do, roll, tumble, etc. We weren't to sure we believed him on that rolling and tumbling thing (but he was right).
Right this way for more of our journey.....
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Hydrocephalus Guest Book
in this book you will find people with varied stories on hydrocephalus. It is very informative and has helped me in a lot of ways.
© Trudy November 9, 1997
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