Carly’s Surgery
Posted by Greg Steward | Filed under Carly
After a two-year process of establishing a problem and getting the proper diagnosis, Carly had surgery for “Tethered Cord Syndrome” on Wednesday, April 29. The surgery was performed at Emanuel Hospital by Dr. Wehby. We had to have her at the hospital at 6:00 AM and she went into surgery about 8:00 AM. The surgery consists of making a small incision (about one inch) in the lower back and going into the spinal column between two discs. A simple snip of a cord that is below the spinal cord and it is done. You can see a picture provided by the doctor that was taken during surgery. It was taken through a microscope and you can clearly see the cord that needed to be cut. I don’t know the scale, but remember the whole incision is only about an inch long.
The surgery was finished around 9:00 AM and she was in recovery until about 10:30 AM. My long-time friend, Mark Kingen, sat with us through the surgery, and later Kathy’s mom and step-father came to visit. Late afternoon, Siddharth, a student at PSU from India, also came to visit Carly. Siddharth and Carly became friends when he visited us for dinner earlier in the school year.
Apart from severe crankiness later in the afternoon/evening from missing a nap that day, she did great. The next day it was hard to tell that she had surgery and that has generally been the case since then. We have a follow-up appointment with the doctor on Thursday, May 7.
Emanuel hospital does a great job with children and she was actually looking forward to “having a sleep-over” at the hospital. However, when the time came, in her missed-nap crankiness after the surgery, she was requesting that the doctor be informed that she wanted to go home NOW.
She is to have “reduced” activity for about two weeks after the surgery, but apart from riding her bike and playing outside a lot, she does mostly what she normally does with occasional reminders from us to “take it easy.”
For some personal reflection by Greg, see “If God Should Take My Daughter.”
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