Day 9

As advised five days after the tumour was removed Mr. Richards did his usual rounds. He then popped back a couple of minutes later to say he'd just had a phone call from the histology lab saying the tumour was totally benign. Kirra had had a Low Grade Cerebellar Astrocytoma Tumour. The relief was overwhelming and it physically felt like a weight had been lifted from our shoulders. CSF was still leaking from her wound and she was still vomiting, but this all felt trivial now knowing she did not have cancer.

The cerebellum is second smaller division of the brain, located below the cerebrum and in the posterior of the brain. The cerebellum features a central portion, called the vermis, and two side portions, or hemispheres - one on each side. It is the responsibility of the cerebellum to co-ordinate and modify the resultant activity centers in the inner ear, and adjusts and fine tunes these actions by passing the regulating signals to the motor neurons of the brain and spinal cord. Damage to the cerebellum therefore results in loss of ability to maintain precise muscular coordination and fine cooperative actions of the motor processes (called ataxia).

Just when things start going right Kirra's wound starts to leak large amounts of CSF. After the registrar examined her it was decided she would have to go back to Theatre and inspect her wound. This meant opening four layers of stitches to get to her Dura, which is the last layer of her Meninges or skin that holds the CSF to protect her brain. Paula took her to theatre at 1.30pm. The operation went well, it turned out a small hole had appeared in her Dura Patch. This was repaired and Kirra re-stitched. Again because she stopped breathing under the anaesthetic (and the recovery nurses wanted to keep her!) we did not get her back until 4.15pm. All's looking good and Kirra, Paula and myself had a good nights Sleep.

Woke up quite early only to find Kirra's wound had started to leak again. Paula took her down for another CT scan, which showed no excess fluid. It was decided Kirra would have to go to theatre again to have a Lumber Drain put in. Whilst in theatre her wound was cleaned and some more hair shaved off and permanent stitches put in. We collected her an hour and a half later. Dr Mann (the anaesthetist was pleased to tell us she had not stopped breathing this time. This meant it was the position of the tumour affecting her breathing and not a reaction to the anaesthetic, this also meant Kirra was healing nicely. The lumber Drain was to reduce the CSF pressure and allow the wound to heal. This was achieved by positioning the drain so that 10 ml of CSF could drain per hour, unfortunately this restricted Kirra to her cot or Paula's Lap.

The Lumber Drain seems to be working and Kirra's wound is dry. Due to CSF leaking so much the sample taken from Fridays Operation showed a count of 2000 Antibody producing white blood cells. (The normal count is 0-5 cells.) This high count indicated kirra had an infection of her meninges. Meningitis to you and me. Although the word Meningitis sends all sorts of thoughts racing around your brain, it was explained that it was not the same strain of bacteria as we have all heard scary reports about on television. Also in the controlled Hospital environment it was not as serious as it sounded. Her antibiotics were increased and changed to Cefotaxime (a more specialised antibiotic to fight the bug causing her Meningitis.)