Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Testing, testing ... And Christmas in hospital.




Harrison as you now know has epilepsy, but in the investigations to find out if there is changes to Harrison's brain causing this epilepsy, the doctors did an MRI, which showed a lump at the base of Harrison's head, so then a CT scan was done to determine if the lump was on the brain or on the skull.

As it turns out, it is on the skull. So Dr Webster felt it would be wise to follow on with a bone scan (I think just to be safe) but said not too urgently. All this in the last three weeks, and the bone scan (nuclear medicine scan) was brought forward suddenly and conducted Monday 17th December, to see what they could see. They saw plenty....

Now the lump there is visible, showing as a little "hot spot" where the dye they injected showed up. As to what this is we are still unsure, but the doctors feel it is not cancerous - but have said they still need to do more testing to be conclusive. In their words, "we're not out of the woods yet".

So we are next down at the Children's hospital on 16th January 2008.. OMG only really three weeks away, for a Bone Marrow Scan and for the long awaited bone marrow transplant review.

Only time will tell we guess, as to how the BMT is going and what this next scan tells.

In the mean time Harrison had intragam on Friday 21st December , and two hours after leaving the hospital from this we have been readmitted. Harrison has a central line infection - again. (This time not from chewing on the darn thing though). The line has been accessed by that many different people for that many different reasons over the last month that anything could have happened, and because these go straight into a main vein when they become infected the infection goes immediately into the blood stream. Now for this and Harrison's SCID - well simply it equals a major temperature, and this time a convulsion (which scared the living be-jesus out of me) , then a rushed emergency trip to the hospital for treatment. ...

We don't know why this time, but the bug is fairly resistant and he is on strong antibiotics to hopefully kill off the bug and save the central line. If the central line can't be cleared then we run the risk of having to have this one taken out and a new one inserted.. Which would mean another anaesthetic and hospital stay.. Although we are already in Gosford Hospital - Children's ward for a week of treatment now anyway so what's a few days added on for this? :)

So again we wait, and hopefully Harrison gets better, but I can honestly say this time he is really sick.. He is not the world's best sleeper, and pretty much all he is doing is sleeping now.

So the next blog will be all about Christmas .. I have gone back and added pictures to the last few blogs, and I have added some cool ones of Harrison having his testing done over the last week or two!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hiya tracey. just wanted to send all our love and let you know you guys are always in our thoughts..
love teya, andy and boys

Anonymous said...

Hi There,

How is baby Harrison doing?
Thinking about you and wishing you all well.

A Nurse from Canada

temps said...

Hi Tracey

Hope everything is going well. Im sure you are very busy but i would love an update.

Thinking of you all everyday.

mamfa and ryden