There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home ...

Now that we've recovered and caught up on some much needed sleep, we thought we'd better send out a post with an update.

First and foremost, we can not stop saying thank you to everyone who sent good thoughts our way, prayed for Cole, our doctors, nurses, and us. We are so so touched with everyone's generosity and love for our sweet and special son.

We finally made it out of the hospital last Friday (what seems like a month away) and have spent the last few days just recovering and trying to get back to our semi-normal life. The doctors were very pleased with the progress he's made, his head and incision look good. We head back to the doctor next week to get the shunt stitches removed and probably another CT scan -- pretty soon we'll have hit the two dozen mark on the CT scans. Cole is slowly returning to his old self - smiling more and more, laughing, playing with more toys, squealing. And his pal Ellie is glad to have him home, once she got done smelling him ALL over. As we expected, we took a few steps back with regards to sitting up and rolling over, but we're confident we'll be right back there soon.

He's still in some pain when we pick him up in certain positions. But that's to be expected with all of the work they did in his noggin. And he's still got some fluid sloshing around. We're on a strict routine to switch him from side to side about every two hours -- don't want to lose that beautiful new head shape. And that tends to cause some puffiness in one side or the other (depending on the side he's on). We've noticed a little bit of a droop in one eye (we saw some of it in the hospital but because he was so swollen, we couldn't decide if it was longer term effect) - we're waiting to see if it sticks around or is more like the palsy incident we had after his last shunt installation. It may be something we have to watch for and advice the surgeons on subsequent shunt installations ... hopefully years and years from now.

And he's still on his seizure medication as a precaution, because it's one of those meds you have to be slowly taken off (vs just stopping). We were able to switch him from Prevacid (for his reflux) to Zantac (thanks to his good and willing doctors and the good advice of one of our hydroparents). And he's been off his more serious pain meds (Lortab) for several days and we're only using Motrin every other day -- so hopefully we can be completely off of that as well. And his hair is really beginning to come back fast.

And with Cole doing much better, Shawn was able to return to group (thanks to his colleagues that filled in for him over the last two weeks), which meant a trip out to Grandma Jacquie's and Grandpa Keith's. Next, we're ready to where the therapists can start their routine ... a really positive step.

Thanks again to everyone - you mean the world to all of us.