Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy-Day 1

It has been a long day. I will do my best to give you a quick summary of our surgery day.

From a medical standpoint, the surgery was a success. They said we would see improvements immediately, and in a way, we have. With my thumb, I was able to push Nina's foot in order to get it to 90 degrees. Incredible! Absolutely incredible. The down side, is that her muscles and body are having a hard time figuring out what is going on. Connections that were there are now gone, and some other connections are finally being able to kick in. After flexing Nina's foot, it was followed with some light muscle spasms, which we have heard are the worse to deal with after the rhizotomy. The surgeon advised us not to push that too much (knowing of course we want to see and try the difference) he did say this could bring out the spasms. Her legs are really super sensitive.

Nina has an epidural for the pain of the surgery and those nerves, it is not in the same place as an epidural for pregnancies. It helps, but Nina has sensation in her legs. She hates the catheter, this has by far been the hardest thing to deal with.

Emotionally she is a mess. It is hard to come out of surgery and feel so not like yourself. She finally came out of recovery at 3:00 pm and we had some very intense hours where she was crying and crying. They increased her pain meds and we feel the pain is being controlled pretty well, emotionally this is another story.

Tonight some friends came to visit, and Nina did really well with them here. And when I told her it was time to go to bed, she just closed her eyes and fell asleep quickly.

So now it is time for me to go to bed. Andy will spend the night with her and I will go sleep. Tomorrow morning he will go take a long nap while I am with Nina.

They said tomorrow sometime in the afternoon they would get Nina up (she has had to lie flat all day, and she has not tried to get up, which is pretty amazing)

I will update here again as soon as I can.