Re: Slane update-spinal fusion

[Guest guest]

Cheryl,

I will email you privately tomorrow, but all I can say now is Wow!,

thank God it's over, and Happy Birthday! I wondered why you were

so quiet for so long.

Jodi Z.

[Guest guest]

hi cherly!

my thoughts and prayers go out to your family during michaels

recovery. and a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! to the triplets. good luck

with everything and keep us posted!

jodie

(nicholas-5 nonrss, christopher-3 rss 22lbs 33 " ght, johnathon-8m

nonrss)-

[Guest guest]

Hi Cheryl,

I have been wondering about you guys, especially on my weekly drives

across Conn.

I often think about . To me he has it the hardest.

From your reports, I can see you are doing a great job and that he is

indeed a very special boy. I certainly hope that things go better for

him from here on.

Hope to see you in April at Mark's, if he is still having his annual

New England RSS dinner.

Please keep us posted.

Ken M

> For those that are interested, just underwent another

spinal

> fusion for his congenital scoliosis. It took 3 surgeons, 11 hours,

> and 9 days in the hospital, but he's doing well. They started

> working on him at 8:00 a.m. on Jan 28th and didn't finish until

7:00

> p.m. They had to fuse his spine both anterior and posterior. They

> went in from the side to get to the front of the spine, had to take

> 1 rib out, collapse his lungs, and remove 5 discs to gain them

> flexibility in strengthening it. That took about 5 hours, then

they

> started working on the back. They placed 2 rods, 4 hooks to hold

> the rods, and 9 screws to support the fusion. All in all,

> everything went well, but a very scary time for us all. Our goal

> this time around was to get as much correction as possible out of

> his back, plus prevent the curvature from getting worse. He was

> almost at a 70 degree curve, and now he's just over 30. That's a

> huge improvement for him. He spent 5 days in PICU and 9 days total

> in the hospital. He's currently in a full body cast for 6-8 weeks,

> and if all goes well, then will move into a back brace. So, for

us,

> we survived another storm with our -- this one being the

> biggest by far. Words can't tell you how scared we were thru all

> this, but my son takes it like a trooper and somehow gets us all

> thru it. He's home, but doing very well, and next week should be

> returning back to school.

>

> While all this is going on, my kids officially turned 6 on February

> 9th. So, now we have 6 year old triplets (soon to be 16) living in

> the house. We thru them a wonderful birthday party on Valentine's

> Day because and Jen were troopers thru all this as well.

>

> Cheryl