Another surgery complete!

I wish I'd updated before now to let everyone know that the surgery wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it was going to be, to ease everyone's minds. Oh well, I didn't, sorry :(

I'm writing this post from my hospital bed at Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX. I had surgery Thursday, May 25th at 8 a.m. to repair a hole in my skull base. The hole most likely occurred over a year and a half ago when the pressure in my brain became so high that it broke through the bone to relieve itself and has been leaking since, acting like a natural shunt to regulate my intracranial pressure (ICP). As much as I would love not to have any more surgeries, I am thankful the Lord designed my body the way He did b/c what seemed like a defect saved my life, or at least saved me from a seious brain injury.

The neurosurgeon performed the first part of my surgery by making a 2 inch, semi-circular, incision right above my hairline and inserting a temporary shunt through a burr hole in my skull into my ventricle that served as a pressure monitor as well as a drain for excess spinal fluid. Then, my neuro-otolaryngologist went through my nose, repaired my deviated septum and used part of my septum to reinforce the area which my previous CT scans showed my spinal fluid was leaking through. He tried and tried for 4 hours to aggravate my spinal fluid leak, but as the name suggests "spontaneous spinal fluid leak," it is just that, spontaneous. It is almost impossible to predict when it will, or cause it to leak. Therefore, he was unable to place a patch exactly where it needed to be, but he hoped it would hold and be accurately placed based on the scans.

I woke up in the N(euro)ICU with packing in both nostrils that were each the size of tampons, literally! It was impossilbe to know if I was leaking or just feeling pressure but after the third day I was almost positive I was leaking again. Bummer. Oh well, the surgereon said even if I am still leaking we are in a much better position now that the sinuses are clean and open and it should be much easier to find the bony defect the next time. We collected samples from the drainage today and will send them off to be 100% sure it's CSF, them we'll try it again. The next procedure won't include a "brain drain" so that will make it much less invasive and complicated.

Hopefully I'll be leaving the hospital tomorrow! Paul and the boys and I will be staying in Houston at our 11 month-old nephew, Blake's, house. (Blake's parents, Joel and Melissa will be there also...hehe) We are supposed to stay in town for 2-3 days to make sure my condition stays stable, plus we get to spend time with Blakey.

We're not sure what's going to happen next. Please keep us in your prayers and we'll keep you updated as we find things out.
Love,
The Henrys