Back to Hospital

For those who might not know, Cole is scheduled to go in for a fairly major surgery - cranial reconstruction for a condition called Craniosynostosis (suctures in his skull have prematurely fused together) It's somewhat more problematic due to the fact that his skull plates overlapped (due to overdrainage) when his first shunt failed 3 months after installation.

He's had plenty of room in that nogin of his - now and his ventricles look good - now, but we want to avoid a problem down the road. Also his shunt catheter (the piece that runs from the ventricle to the shunt has been recalled (this is where you can shake your head - we did). The doctors didn't want to touch it if it was working as intended, which it was, since new shunts have a %50% chance of failure (more head shaking would also be ok here) but since they're going in, they're going to take care of it and hopefully save us some surgery down the road.

The procedure will take 5-6 hours. It will start by - hold on to your mouse for this one -
[1] shaving off all of those beautiful locks of hair,
[2] making an incision running across the top of his head from ear to ear,
[3] peeling forward and backward the skin covering his face and back of his head to reveal the skull,
[4] removing the old catheter and installing a drain for surgery,
[5] cutting off the top of the skull (think of a haircut using a bowl),
[6] cutting apart his skull into the pieces and segments they would expect to see,
[7] replacing the skull segments,
[8] reinstalling the shunt catheter,
[9] Sewing up his incision (in a zig zag fashion to accomodate for hair growth (which we expect to be plentiful) and reduce visibility... and that's it.

They expect him to be in the Intensive Care for 1-2 days and then admitted with a hospital stay of approximately 5-7 days. They're closely monitoring Cole given the trouble he had after his last botox injections, so it's conceivable that we could be on the longer end of that stay.

As always, we're planning on using this blog to update folks on the comings and goings. They are really good at the hospital at keeping us informed all thorugh the surgery. For example, typically we meet the OR nurse before we even go back and she'll then call us in the waiting room several times during surgery to give us updates and see if we have any questions. Once they're done, the surgeon(s) come out and give us more detailed updates on what transpired, what to expect, problems or complications (we're hoping to skip this piece), and let us know how soon we an expect to see him in recovery.

Then they'll take us back - one at a time (it's pretty limited on space) and then once he's become conscious, they'll release him to his room or in our case, they'll bring the other parent back. So watch this space for updates and email with any questions or post with any comments.

We appreciate everyone's love and support of us and most especially of Cole.