So we went and saw Dr Big Guy this morning Anna wasn't feeling to hot. He said her pressure is trying to balance out and thats what I kind of figured. So we are coming home for couple of weeks and will return Nov. 12 and have double subtemporal decompression on Nov 13 @ 8am. This will allow anna's body to heal and her shunt to work properly. Thanks again Joy.

Ps. We are getting a dog:) His name is Champ and is a goldendoodle. We are very excited about this adventure in our life.

Well they discharged anna to the ronald mcdonald house. We go to clinic @ 10:30 am to find out our next step are we doing the brain surgery now or later. Anna has only eaten maybe 10bites of food today so that was another reason he wanted her discharged to see if leaving would encourage her to eat and help her diziness. So everything is up in the air and Im not sure about anything right this moment. Please continue to pray for anna's body to heal and for Dr Big Guy. After clinic tomorrow I will update the blog and let everyone know the next step. Thanks again for the support. Joy

Well Dr Big Guy (kosnik) just came in. Anna has been getting very dissy and fell about hr ago. He said this is because of all the pressure she had on her bacl and this is why we are doing things slow. He said you might get discharged tomorrow but I don't think you are going home any time soon. But we will talk again tomorrow. Please continue to Pray.

Well we had a rough night and daddy sleep thru most of it..He snores really loud!!! Anyway we haved an okay we were up and walking however we haven't done some of the most important things like eat more than 3 bites all day and get pain under control. We are going to try again at dinner time to actually eat and get this pain under control and start drinking so we can get discharged tomorrow. And get to go home on thursday.. We are waiting on the phone call to tell us what day we are doing the brain surgery. I will update again tomorrow. Joy

Update: Sorry I haven't done this earleir its just been a long day. Well Mark made it in time to see Anna before she went back to surgery this morning. When she went we thought it was going to be a long time however Dr Kosnik came out 2hrs into and said were done for today we brought in General Surgeons to blow up her stomach and found her catheter kinked adn the valve not working. So they fixed the cathiter and replaced her valve. Then to the brain we didn't do it because we wanted her shubnt to start flowing correctly and she would drain to much csf and have a low pressure headache. So we will probably be discharged on wednesday to the otel then go home on thursday. Sad news is we have to come back in 3 weeks to do the brain surgery. Thanks again for all the encourging letters and notes they have ment the world to Anna.

Just wanted to update. Saturday we just bummed around and Anna had a good day with some exeptions. Today hasn't been so great her pressure is back up and she is very nervous about the surgery. She woke up this morning and said lets go home and not do the surgery but as the day has gone on she's getting okay with the idea. Please continue to pray and I will update this as soon as she comes out of surgery and we have a moment. Thanks again for all your prayers and support. If you would like to give anna marie a word of encouragement you can email her @ annadingess@yahoo.com or leave them on here.

Sorry about the delay in updating however I wanted results before I let everyone know. Anna had said the that her head had been hurting when we went to the Neurosurgeons office they did a ct scan and xrays and said that she was backed up and that was the cause of the headaches. On thursday we went back into Dr Kosnik's office and he admitted anna to have a Lumbar Puncture (LP) and a 3D ct scan. We were able to do the 3D ct scan on thursday and had to move the LP to Friday because she had a allergic reaction to the sleepy medicine. On friday they did the LP and her opening pressure was 30. So finally they just came in and said surgery on monday @ 1:30, they will be redoing her right sub temporal decompresion, replacing her LP shunt and placing a valve in her brain.

I had no idea when we came up it was going to be this intense so please continue to Pray for Anna Marie, the doctors and me..Mark is going to be coming up hopefully on Sunday then going home monday night after her surgery.
Also please keep Alexandria and Austin Mark in your prayers as they don't understand why mommy is gone again. Also childcare to keep them while Im away.

Thanks again for all your support,

Joy Dingess

We went and saw Dr Katz (neuro-opthamalogy) her vision was good and he wanted to come back and see him after our apptointments today. So today our first appt. was with Dr Kosnik (neurosurgeon) and after several xray and a cat-scan we have decided that Anna needs to go see a GI dr. Then we went to see Dr Hardin (endocrinology) and recieved amazing news!! Anna has grown 4.2 inches since January 20,09. So we are continueing on the same dosage and Praying that on thrusday Dr Kosnik and the GI dr will have some answers. Thanks agian for all your prayers and support.