Today Ladan appears to be in a worse way, possibly due to an infection somewhere.
Back on May 17th I reported that family members were seeing small but encouraging signs in Ladan, and in the weeks that followed these continued but tailed off in their frequency, there are still some signs of improvement, including better physical responses from time to time, but overall progress has been slow, though real. Doctors have been encouraged by what has occurred recently, particularly as Ladan has also been much more stable in terms of blood pressure and temperature and had remained almost free of infection since my last update. Ladan was also taken off the slightly oxygenated air supply and has been breathing normal air again without problems.
The hydrocephalus (increased ventricle size in the brain usually due to excess fluid) persisted and doctors are unsure of the cause, On Wednesday 20th July Ladan had another shunt revision hoped to help resolve remaining questions over this problem even though the existing shunt was thought to be in working order.
That operation did not work quite as expected, 36 hours later she was showing some breathing irregularities and not being easily woken from sleep, a scan confirmed that things were not right. Ladan’s neurosurgical consultant came in and carried out late night emergency surgery to remove any immediate danger, he requested that Ladan be moved back onto the High Dependency Unit for closer monitoring for a while. This allowed for a few brief tests to be done over how Ladan responded to pressure. Then, on Wednesday 27th July Ladan had surgery for a further shunt revision. Following that surgery Ladan seemed very agitated for several days, though the shunt seems to be working okay, the surgery can leave patients feeling very sore but there is also an increasing suspicion, due mainly to spiking temperature, blood pressure and high heart rate, that Ladan has an infection, though it is proving difficult to detect from test results.
We have moved back to Ward 30 now but are in a different cubicle. Ladan has just had a slightly worrying 30 hour sleep accompanied by a fair amount of twitching, having woken her eyes are somewhat divergent and less lively looking than they were, but it is still thought that all of this is due to an underlying infection which has not been identified as yet.
The prayers and supportive messages from around the world have been most encouring, thank you very much for them.