Magnus had his head ultrasound yesterday morning. It went very smoothly, starting with the great street parking space I scored right in front of the building with money still on the meter!
The ultrasound tech remembered Magnus; she had done his head and abdominal ultrasounds on the day he was born. The scan itself was really easy, she was able to do it without him even getting out of the stroller. One other nice thing she did was that she kept saying what a good boy he was being, even though he was a little fussy. It's happened more than a few times now that other medical personnel have expressed their frustration when Magnus has gotten fussy during a procedure, which makes the whole thing really stressful, because not only am I trying to comfort him (often under circumstances where he is justified in acting fussy) I also feel like I have to comfort the technician, as well! So, I appreciated that she said that, but even more than that, I appreciated the fact that as we were leaving, she whispered to me that his ultrasound looked normal.
Of course, I knew that the scan needed to be read by the radiologist to get the official word, which came back from our pediatrician today. Indeed, his ultrasound was normal.
The caveat is that this doesn't necessarily rule out problems with increased pressure in his brain; all they can see from an ultrasound is whether his ventricles are enlarged. However, the fact that they are not is very good. The plan now is to continue to monitor his head growth; if it continues to be overly rapid, we will have to do some other sort of more invasive testing like an MRI (bad because he would have to be fully sedated for this) or a CT scan (bad because it involves exposure to a high dose of radiation). Hopefully neither will be needed.
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6 years ago
I'm glad that things look good. However, it's like you and Hannah both said, "Why can't they ever say, 'everything is great; now go home and quit worrying?'" (Did I punctuate that correctly?) It's like they're always looking for the next problem!
ReplyDeleteJen,
ReplyDeleteThere are 2 other ways we use to look for increased intracranial pressure in the ED: spinal taps (not fun but generally don't require sedation) and, more recently one of my favorite tests because it's neither invasive nor radiation-filled, ocular ultrasound. For the latter, we put an ultrasound probe on a closed eye and measure the width of the optic nerve 3mm from where it inserts in the eye. It's quick and easy, but I don't know if they know the relevant measurements for little people. I'll ask my ultrasound guru colleagues...
Hope all's well otherwise!
Elaine
I'm glad to hear that the u/s results came back normal. I think you were on to something when you suggested it could be related to how his body is distributing nutrition/calories. He hasn't had the feeding tube for very long and his body could still be adjusting to the "sudden" increased infusion of vitamins and minerals. BTW, how is that process going for you?
ReplyDeleteThe ocular u/s sounds interesting, but it would be yucky to have that u/s goop on your face/eyes. That crap is hard enough to get off your body.