Hard Decisions

Things are not good for Anna.

Yesterday Anna started showing symptoms of increased intracranial pressure again.  The doctors were pretty concerned that her shunt might be clogged.  She had a quick brain MRI, but that came back showing that the shunt was working properly.  The next step was to see if Anna had contracted some type of infection.  Some spinal fluid was drawn via the shunt and she was started on a heavy dose of antibiotics.  She hasn't had a fever and the initial results show that it wasn't an infection.

During this time Anna's breathing became very erratic, even to the point of not breathing for 5-10 seconds at a time.  The doctors wanted to do a long MRI to see what was going on inside Anna's head, but they were concerned about putting her under general anesthesia given her shallow breaths.  They decided to let Anna stay awake during the MRI and Matt and I were allowed to be in the room with her.  Anna did a good job staying still for the hour long procedure, but Matt and I were about a minute away from pressing our "panic button" towards the end because of the slowness of Anna's breaths.

We returned to the PICU after the MRI.  Anna was started on a super dose of steroids to try and take care of the apparent swelling inside her brain.

Then we received the bad news.  In the three weeks since Anna had her last, long MRI, the cancer has grown and spread.  This is very uncommon.  The disease itself is putting pressure on Anna's brainstem which is why she has been having trouble breathing, among other things.

Last night we had to make two hard decisions.  We decided that should Anna's breathing stop, we did not want her intubated.  That would have been the last resort, anyway, but we opted to stop just short of this invasive procedure.  Thankfully, Anna needed no external help breathing overnight.

The other hard decision we made was that should Anna's heart stop overnight, we chose not to have it restarted.  Since the problem lies in the brain, not the heart, restarting her heart would not have made much difference.  Thankfully, Anna's heart was fine overnight.

Anna's only hope would be to start intensive radiation therapy today here in Madison to try to kill all of the cancer cells invading her body.  We will be meeting with everyone sometime this morning to discuss this option.  We are told there is still hope for Anna's recovery, but her chances are much lower now.

At this point we do not want to speak with anyone outside our immediate families, but we wanted to share this latest step in Anna's journey with those who care and are praying.

Please pray today that God gives Matt and I clear guidance and wisdom with any decisions we have to make.

Please pray today that Anna is peaceful and without pain.  In spite of her obvious pain yesterday, she was a rockstar during her therapy sessions.  Her head really, really hurts whenever she is awake.

Anna has touched so many people's lives here in the hospital, in addition to those who know and love her outside of this building.