Wednesday, January 28, 2004 11:17 AM CST

We are getting closer to the end of this prolonged hospital visit! Once again, the plans have changed. Today, Aidan's EVD (external ventricular drain) was clamped off so that we can see how well he can do without any kind of shunt to drain the CSF from his brain. Sometime today he will have an MRI to visualize his brain and note the size of his ventricles (indicating how well he is draining). He is scheduled for his (hopefully) final visit to the OR tomorrow. I think it is mostly likely that he will come home next Monday, if all goes reasonably well. Whether with no shunt or with a shunt to his pleural cavity, we do not yet know.

I (Willa) am home at Shaver Lake again, perhaps for the last time before we all come home together. Later today I will drop the kids off at their Fresno grandma's house and drive back to SF with Paddy. Yesterday we made pizza, played Yahtzee and pingpong, talked until midnight (teenage boys and I) about world history, ethics and trees and Paddy danced and clapped his hands to his sister's Irish music and "helped" us play ping pong!. It was nice to be back together for a day, but we really missed Aidan and Kevin. Home and health are blessings that are easy for us to take for granted, until they are gone for a while.

I will try to update again tomorrow after Aidan's surgery when we know how it went. Kevin says that Aidan was awake at midnight and then lost his IV at 5 am, and it took 4 tries to get a new one started. They gave Aidan some morphine to help with the pain, but he wasn't sure if it helped much. Kevin is VERY tired I think and that hospital beard is still there but at least he isn't talking to a volleyball, yet (for all of you who watched that Tom Hanks movie, I am blocking on the name of it, I guess I am a little tired too!)