Positive Results

Thank you to everyone who prayed for Ellie during her sedated MRI/MRA.  She thankfully had zero problems with anesthesia and after about 40 minutes in recovery we got to come home!  Because of her past incident with anesthesia we don’t take that for granted at all and are very relieved and thankful that everything went so smoothly. 

The results from the MRI/MRA showed the same stenosis of the interior carotid artery as was seen in her angiogram.  In other words, they saw no disease progression on the left side of her brain (the side we are monitoring for disease progression).  The radiologist did note an additional stenosis but both neurosurgeons feel it’s an error on the picture and not an actual vessel stenosis.  There was also no sign of any strokes on that side of her brain.  

On the right side of her brain (surgical side) they are already seeing improvements (growth of the new artery) which they wouldn't have expected to see this soon but think she is improving faster than most because that side of her brain was so starved for oxygen prior to surgery.   So this was wonderful to hear and hopefully indicated that the surgery on that side of her brain was a success.  

The neurosurgeons are still concerned about Ellie’s blinking episodes.  The concern is that the blinking could indicate that she’s having TIAs (mini-strokes).  So neurosurgery is referring us to neurology to see what their opinion is on the blinking.  Ellie does the blinking thing multiple times every day and we haven’t been able to establish a pattern as to when or why she does it.  It does seem that she does it more often when she is upset but she also oftentimes does it when she’s not upset. 

Her neurosurgeons seem fairly on the fence as to when we should proceed with surgery on the left side of her brain.  Initially they said they would give her time to recover from the first surgery and would do the second surgery approximately 6 weeks later.  But since that time they have taken a more “wait and see” approach because they are concerned if they proceed with surgery too soon that the surgery will be less likely to be successful.  We only have one shot at the surgery so we certainly don’t want to jump too soon.  At the same time, we also don’t want to wait too long and risk her having a stroke in the meantime.  Her neurosurgeons are still talking as if they intend to proceed with surgery in a matter of months not years but there is no set timeline right now.

I’m not going to lie, the weight of this decision and the uncertainty of it all is highly stressful.  For now, we are just trying to take things one step at a time and so right now we know the next step is to see what neurology thinks of her blinking.  

Otherwise she continues to do great.  She loves to play with Payton, loves Dora the Explorer, enjoys being outdoors (when it’s not too hot), likes cats, and likes to dance.  She is very opinionated, throws huge temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, and doesn’t yet enjoy attending preschool.  In other words, Ellie is your typical almost 2 year old and we are very thankful for that!