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.
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6 comments:
i'm so glad to read this update. how amazing that you had someone drilling inside your head and then you just typed a completely coherent entry on your blog --- truly the miracles of modern science (all made possible by The Great Physician, of course!)
love you, mommy! I hope it goes well.
what star jewal said.
I thought the NICU was the neonatal intensive care unit? weren't you in the ICU?
Love you Ramona... just thinking about ya and praying for you and your dear family.
Tessa, if you are a baby in the ICU, you are in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, but I was in the Neurology Intensive Care Unit. It is a matter of context.
Thanks for the prayers, Lisa. I will post an update soon.
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