January 2012

We were very eager to go to the doctor at the beginning of January to see if the medicine was working to reduce the fluid on Billy's brain. He had another CT Scan and then we went to the surgeon's office after. Again it wasn't bad news or great news. The CT scan showed no change at all in the size of his ventricles, which is in relation of the amount of spinal fluid he has on the brain. Therefore, he still had hydrocephalus, but it had not gotten worse which is was good. The doctor took him off the medicine and told us to come back in 4 weeks. Those were the words deep down I knew he would say, but oh how I didn't want to hear that. I don't mean to sound ungrateful because we are so blessed to have Billy doing as well as he is only being 2 1/2 months post surgery, but watching and waiting is so hard emotionally. There's no closure, no black and white answers. I learned back in the hospital there were no black and white answers when it comes to Neuro, but as I've said before it's still hard to accept the words, "We just have to wait and see."

The doctor did tell us that even if his symptoms don't get worse, but the excess fluid remains, he still may need a shunt. He said the shunt would help him get back to 100% and without it he may only get to 90%-95%. Bill doesn't want to live the rest of his life at 90% so he has somewhat accepted the idea of a shunt, but like I said before, we will just have to wait and see.

The doctor did release Billy to go back to work part time and to slowly work his way to full time. The doctor suggested about a month of part time, but that we would have to be the judge on Billy's progress and tolerance. Going back to work was harder than Billy thought it would be. He is a salesman and has an office. He is mostly on the phone and computer all day, so he thought a half day would be easy. Sitting for a half day wasn't so bad, but the constant stimuli of the computer, phones and trying to process multiple things at once was very difficult at first. Everyone he works with was great and really tried to help him as much as they could. They were very supportive of him leaving half day and going home to rest, which took a lot of stress off of him. As January continued Billy got stronger physically and mentally. He continued to have pressure in his head, but it was manageable and slowly lessened.