Latest Doctor's Visit

Well, for all of the worrying I did about the CT scan and how to feed Andrew and when to feed Andrew and how bad the traffic would be, things went relatively easy today! The hospital called yesterday and told us that they would not be sedating him they would do what's called a "feed and bundle" where I would feed him and then we'd let him drift off to sleep. But they didn't even do that. All they did was put a little sugar water on his pacifier and lay him in the machine. The headrest was a U-shape, so he wasn't able to move his head side to side. Plus, once they put the lead apron on the rest of him, it was so heavy, he couldn't have moved if he wanted to! The whole scan took about 3 minutes. Since it was only about 7:30, I waited at the hospital and fed him before I headed over to the doctor's office at 9:00. We waited there for about an hour and then saw the doctor. They were able to show us the scans on the computer right in the room. They were actually very fascinating! They did a scan of his brain to make sure that everything looked good there. The doctor said that everything looks fine. Then they showed us the scan of the sutures. The only one that is fused is the sagittal suture that runs from the center of his head straight back. All of the other sutures look fine.

For the surgery, the doctor will perfom what's called a modified pi procedure. If you're familiar with the math number pi, (which I can't type on the computer) it looks like a T with two stems. They'll cut out two strips of bone along each side of sagittal suture, then one across the front and another along the back. This site shows a really good picture of the cuts they will make. I don't think they'll add any wires, though. The doctor said the number of cuts really depended on how the skull reshaped itself as they were performing the surgery. The surgery will last about two hours, and he'll be in the hospital 2 or 3 days. He'll have an incision across the top of his head, but the doctor said they would use a plastic surgery tecnique to close the incision so there won't be too much scarring. Plus, he will, hopefully :), grow more hair that will cover it all up. We'll see the doctor two weeks after surgery, and if all is going well, we won't have to go back for another four months.

Which takes us to dates. It looks like we'll have the suregery the week of Spring Break (April 7th). The doctor thought waiting until the end of May was too long, and after he explained to us the post-op care, I'm comfortable with Spring Break. The skin incision will be partially healed by the time I go back to school, plus there's really very little post-op care. He probably will not need a helmet. The doctor said he might need a head band that will help push the front and back of his head together, but we won't know that until the two week visit. We'll wait to hear from the surgery scheduler, and when I have an exact date, I'll let everyone know!

By the way, I haven't gotten the poor child in for a picture yet, but here's one I took last Sunday. Knowing the way things go, it may be the only three - month one he gets!