Talia's third day in the hospital: a few photos

These are from Wednesday. You can see that her face is a little puffy. The swelling is mostly gone by now.

Photos: Talia and Heather in the hospital

More here.

Here's the email update I just sent out...

I sent this to a bunch of friends, family, students and colleagues.

Hello again –

Talia, my daughter, finished her surgery this afternoon at around five p.m. She is going to be at Children’s Hospital at least through the end of Wednesday, probably Thursday. The surgery went fine with no complications. The surgeon kept telling us that he thought he had done a fabulous job and that she is even cuter now than she was before. Her head definitely looks different. For the moment she is very uncomfortable and not keeping food down, but I understand that’s more or less normal.

Heather, Zeke and I have received an tremendous amount of support from friends, family, students and colleagues, and I hope to be able to thank all of you individually in the coming days. For the moment, though, I’ll just say: thank you all. I appreciate it.

Nathan

I'll be going back to the hospital tomorrow. Zeke had a good afternoon with his Grammy. I plan to drop him off at daycare in the morning.

Audio post: post-day-care-drop-off report on Zeke and Talia's latest shenanigans

If the sound doesn't work, call (510) 248-0386 (probably as of about 3 pm EDT) to hear it, or, if that fails, click this link for an updated number.

Video diary: an update on Talia

Feeling too fried to write. Basically, though, the news is reasonably good, and things seem under control. She'll go into surgery next Monday and stay in the hospital probably four days. Call (510) 248-0386 to hear the audio if necessary, or click this link to get an updated phone number if that one doesn't work. I wasn't able to extract the sound. Sorry.

A few recent photos

Here's Zeke captured while bathing...


At the Norristown zoo, posing as a swallowtail butterfly (note the die-cast train in his right hand)...

Those two were taken with my phone.

And here's Talia, at a recent outing to Pretzel Park in Manayunk, PA. Taken with Heather's phone.


That's it. No news on Talia's health. She continues to act normal, though now that we know about it, it's easy to find the little ridge of bone running down the center of her skull. The next doctor's appointment is downtown on Tuesday. Apparently CHOP (where we're taking her) is the place to go. I also learned that dolicocephaly means "long head," scaphocephaly means "skiff-shaped head," and craniosynostosis means "skull-bones together."

The clinical name for Talia's condition...

... is variously dolicocephaly or scaphocephaly (premature closure of the sagittal suture of the skull). The general name is craniosynostosis. I've never heard of it before, so I've started doing a little online research, the results of which can be found here.

Another update on Talia's health

Here's the email I sent out to friends and family this afternoon:

Hello,
I've just heard back from the doctor regarding the results of Talia's various tests from last week and unfortunately the news is not good. The MRI shows no problems. However, the skull X-ray shows premature fusion of several of the skull bones. I am taking Talia for a neurosurgery consultation next week. It's possible that they will decide the problem is not serious enough to justify intervention. But the normal thing to do in such cases is surgery, and, from the limited amount I've been able to find out from the internet, it is quite invasive and traumatic -- basically cutting the skull apart and screwing it back together, involving a multi-day hospital stay.

I'll keep you updated as I get more information. Thank you to everyone for your concern.
Nathan

I'll post updates here too.

A little bit more of an update on Talia

It's been an exhausting day, but everything's gone fine so far. I went to work this morning as usual, and Heather took Talia to get some blood drawn (we're checking for lead, given that we live in an old house with some peeling paint). Heather reported that she didn't cry during the drawing. Then off to the pediatrician for a quick exam, since her eye has been looking puffy. They found an ear infection. She'll be on amoxycillin and ear drops for the next ten days. Then the hospital for the day's big event: first a skull X-ray, which I missed (Heather reported some crying), then an MRI (under sedation with chloral hydrate), which took a half hour and was completely uneventful. After that we went home and she slept for three hours. Now she's up, acting pretty groggy from the sedative (which will probably continue until mid-day tomorrow), but her appetite is back and she's obviously in a fine mood. Aside from the little bandage on her arm, you'd never know what an ordeal today was for her. I was especially amazed at how well she seemed to manage being prohibited from eating for half the day. She's a big, big eater these days.

The big question is, of course, what the tests will show, and we won't know that for at least four days. So all we can do is sit tight. No doctor so far has given us any reason to think this is anything other than a perfectly routine screening based on her head size and shape, so I'm not too worried. But still, being at CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia), and seeing all those sick, pale, bald children with their parents, -- well, it left both of us pretty rattled.

A lot of people have been very supportive, and we of course are very grateful.

By the way: the previous post was done over the phone, using Jott, an excellent free phone-to-text service. They have a mysterious transcription mechanism that relies on a combination of computer speech recognition and human transcribers, presumably in some overseas location. That explains the misspelling of "survived."

Big-head Talia

Talia had her nine-month well-baby checkup Tuesday. To our astonishment, the fact that her head circumference is in the 95th percentile is a cause for concern. She's having an MRI and X-ray next Friday to determine whether there is fluid in her brain and whether the plates in her skull are fusing prematurely. Yeesh. Poor baby. They'll sedate her for the procedure.

Zeke's first trip to the E.R.! Whee!

Today Zeke came home from daycare complaining that his arm hurt, and he was reluctant to use it for anything. On the pediatrician's advice, we took him to the emergency room in case an X-ray was needed. Turns out it was nursemaid's elbow.

A child should not be lifted or swung by the arms or hands nor should a child's arm be pulled hard. A small child should be lifted from under the arms.
... [N]ursemaid's elbow commonly occurs when an obstinate child is forcibly pulled along or lifted by the forearm by a parent or older sibling. For example, the injury might occur in a shopping center where a young child, typically two or three years old, is intent on pursuing a course or selecting an item somewhat different from the intentions of the parent.

And there you are. He was back to normal in about five minutes and within an hour he was telling people about how he hurt his arm and had to go to the hospital "yesterday."