Finally Some Answers...

A post from my Aunt...

We saw our ninth orthopedic surgeon yesterday and WOW! finally we got some answers after 14 months of waiting and praying. He is almost sure Emerie has scar tissue built up on the main muscle in her neck and possibly the whole muscle has turned into scar tissue. He said she definitely needs surgery, but he is retiring and want do the surgery. So he is handing it over to the head of pediatric orthopedic surgery. He said they will go in and cut the muscle and she will most likely come out of surgery in a halo or a body cast. He told us to expect the worst. He really does not know what they are dealing with until they get into surgery so he cannot give us many answers or expectations at this point. He is not even sure this is going to work but we have to start with this surgery. He said that he still does not know at this point whether there is an abnormality between her c1 and c2 vertebrae. He said we will have to wait and see how this surgery works. I asked him what if there is an abnormality? He said that would be really bad. He said it was so dangerous that he didn't know whether it could ever be fixed, but he told me that it was so bad he could not even go there at this point. So we just pray that this surgery works. He cannot tell us how ling she will be in the halo or body cast until he gets in there, but he said it would be months at least. I asked if he would sedate me and Emerie for those months. We figured that it would be a few months before we went to surgery, because everytime we go to the doctor they say go home and wait a few months. But the doctor called last night and said how does this Monday sound to you. That was music to our ears. Emerie came out of her cranial helmet 2 weeks ago and her skull is already flattening alot on the right back side which we did not expect. We knew we were going to have cranial reconstruction surgery as soon as she came out of the halo or body cast on the front left side but now it looks like they will have to do the back rightside also. We are seeing the cranialfacial surgeon tommorrow and more than likely they said they will put her back into her helmet until the day of surgery so they can try to stop the flattening before it disfigures her too much. We will be having surgery Monday September 29, 2008 at 7:15 so please keep us in your prayers at that time and in the coming days and months. For those of you who have already been praying and uplifting us for the last 14 months we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Words could never express how thankful we are. We hope that through this experience God will use us to share his love with other people. God has shown us many things in the past 14 months and I know he will continue to do so if we just allow him to. We will just continue to praise God during this storm in our lives, because he is always with us.

Tina and Jeff Hale