Magdalena's CT Scan

Magdalena had her CT scan this morning at OHSU. The procedure went much more smoothly than I could have hoped.

Since she was supposed to be anesthetized at 8 am, I woke her up at 3:10 am to nurse since she couldn't have "food" for 4 hours before the anesthesia. She nursed and went back to bed, and was up a little after 6. We could have given her clear liquid up to 6 am, but decided not to sacrifice the sleep we all needed. I was a bit worried that she would be cranky and fussy since she hadn't eaten since 3, but even though we left the house at 6:50 and were just waiting in the hospital pediatric sedation area for an hour, she was just fine. The office lady provided us a cup of sugar water to dip her pacifier in, and she LOVED that.

Upon check in, the office lady put numbing cream on both her hands and feet. Apparently they use the same than that Orajel is made of, so it wouldn't be dangerous if she accidentally ingested a bit. They also covered it with gauze, and though she did slobber all over the gauze, she didn't break the plastic wrap seal.

At just before 8 am, Magdalena drifted off in my arms, paci in mouth. The nurse came out to get her IV in for the anesthesia and saw that she was out. She asked if Magdalena was a still sleeper, and we said yes. So she decided to let us try the CT scan, which only takes a few minutes - but requires absolute stillness, without anesthesia. Alex and I crossed our fingers that this would work.

We went to the radiation department and the clinician and our nurse helped us get Magdalena on the bed with a holder for her head. They wrapped her in warm blankets, and the hum of the machine coupled with the dim lighting in the room kept her sleeping soundly. Thank God! She slept without moving for the ~5 minutes that she was on the CT scanner, and the images were taken with no anesthesia.

Then we went to the imaging department to get our copies of the images on CD. They told us it would be a 45 minute wait, but were done in 30 minutes. Later we found out that the imaging specialist had not finished with the final work up, so we did not get a copy of the 3D image on that CD. It will be mailed to us soon. And Alex had to download some imaging software in order to view the slices of imagery that we did receive, which only works on Windows XP, not on Windows 7, so we had to look at it on his work laptop instead of our home computers. Hopefully we'll figure out a way to get it to .jpeg or .pdf to post when we do receive the 3D work up.

Though we haven't met with the doctor to review the results yet (Feb 3), we did look at the slices ourselves, and she definitely has a coronal craniosynostosis. The child and image below are not her, but this is exactly what she looks like, and what her CT scan image would look like in the 3D work up, from what we can tell:

So for now, we know for sure that the diagnosis is correct. It's just a matter of when for sure we'll have the surgery. We also have an MRI coming up on March 3, so more imagery and anesthesia for sure then, as it is a 4 hour scan (!). I am just so glad that today went well - one step at a time.