Surgery Not As Expected, But Successful

Thank you all so much for your prayers for my DBS surgery. God was merciful in answering them!

Yesterday's DBS surgery did not go exactly as expected, but it would still be considered "successful." Any who know us will not be at all surprised by that, of course. ;-)

The stereotactic frame placement was more painful than I had expected and the drilling was quite a bit more intense than the "dentist's drill" it was said to resemble, but once we got past those two items, things began to move along.

It took a while to do the brain mapping, but they finally found what seemed to be a good spot. (It was very interesting listening to neurosurgeons talk among themselves...) They were quite excited to make such a good placement and when they turned on the electrical stimulation to try the electrode, the right side of my body actually stopped twitching and jerking! I was suddenly able to touch my finger to my thumb in rapid succession, rather than in a jerking fashion as I had done before! To say I was very happy would be a bit of an understatement.

However, sometime during the surgery I lost some spinal fluid. This can cause the brain to shift positions, although I am not clear on whether it actually did or not. Because of this loss of spinal fluid, they chose to stop the surgery at that point, in case the brain had shifted from where they had already measured and marked it to be.

I was pretty disappointed by this turn of events, but asked if they could do the battery placement at the same time as the second electrode placement. The neurosurgeon said he would consider that possibility, but when he came to see me in the NICU he said they had decided to do two more surgeries due to the increased possibility of infection with having the two surgeries at the same time.

So, the surgery was successful, although I will be having two more surgeries rather than just one. This has always been part of God's plan, though, and I submit my will to His. I had a number of opportunities to share information about our family and why we chose to make room for all of these kids, so perhaps God is not finished with that, yet.

Mr. and Mrs. Micah Smyth!!

And we now present to you, the new Mr. and Mrs. Micah Smyth!! Jennifer and Micah were married in a family ceremony Saturday, April 14, in Madison, AL. A reception, provided by and for friends, followed the ceremony.

After an overnight trip to Guntersville, they hurried home to Michigan to start furnishing and arranging their new apartment together. ;-)

We would like to extend grateful thanks to everyone who has prayed for Micah and Jennifer as they prepared for their wedding and marriage. Your continued prayers would be greatly appreciated, as they now start their new lives together.

Newspaper Article

Here is a link to the article on our family that appeared in today's Huntsville Times.

We were quite pleased with how Yvonne was allowed to keep God in the story, especially considering that our local newspaper does tend to be a bit liberal. ;-)

Blessings
Ramona