Good news and bad news

Yesterday we went to see Dr. Troup to get the results of Emma's MRI's.  It has been a year since she last had MRI's of her brain and spine.  It's been a long time because we weren't sure how Emma would handle a breathing tube during the procedure.  So let me start with that.  Yesterday's conclusion: she does fine with the breathing tube and she is, at least for now, out of the respiratory/pulmonary woods.  A year ago, we weren't sure what was going on with her breathing.  Over time, we determined that it was more of a throat issue, as opposed to lungs and brain, at least when she was awake.  Now we are still dealing with throat issues.  Next point.

The bad news: Emma's MRI's still look bad.  The good news: Emma's MRI's still look bad, emphasis on the word STILL.  Emma's compressed brain stem, low spinal fluid flow, and huge cyst in her spine haven't changed, but Emma has...she is army crawling, pushing with her legs, waving her arms everywhere, and basically doing everything that these clinical issues should prevent her from doing.  So that's great news!  For the time being, we're not going to do anything about it.  Emma's brain decompression is very dangerous, and Dr. Troup says there's a 50/50 chance that the surgery may or may not help right now.  She will have to have this surgery eventually we think, but for now it's just more wait and see.

Today we went to see Dr. Morales, Emma's newest doctor.  He's the neurologist who looked at her EEG.  Emma is not having any type of epileptic episodes that would be causing her left foot and leg twitching.  His best guess is that the twitching is caused by issues on her spine, which we kind of anticipated.  The cyst on Emma's spine runs the entire length of the longest section of her spine.  It would make sense that the cyst's pressure on her spinal cord could be causing the twitching...but no neurosurgeon or neurologist can ever be absolutely sure about it.  Whenever Emma has the Chiari decompression surgery, she'll also have a procedure done to drain the cyst, so that's when we'd really be able to tell if the cyst is causing any kind of issues for Emma.

It's been over a week since I last blogged, so I have some catching up to do from last year:

June 9, 2010

June 13, 2010

June 16, 2010

June 17, 2010

Tonight Emma was rolling and army crawling all over the den like she normally does, and in a just a few minutes did this with the Kleenex box: