Well finally getting around to an updated blog post. What a year! Max’s surgery went wonderfully overall but it was a rough time for him poor guy. He was in the operating room for about 8 hours.
The staff at All Children’s Hospital in St Petersburg were great though and kept coming out every hour or so to update us. He ended up with 36 screws and two rods in his back. They took out the stabilizer bones and ground those up with cadaver bone then pasted that over the screws. This is now growing into new bone and fusing the rods and screws. During surgery he had all kinds of electrodes on him with people constantly checking to make sure the screws didn’t hit any nerves in his spinal column. The precision was incredible.
We had been warned he would look very rough when he came out because he had been on his stomach all that time so his face was very swollen. But no matter what the warning, seeing your baby look like that is just horrible. He was in a lot of pain but had an entire team of doctors whose job during his 6 days in the hospital was to focus on keeping the pain at a minimum. He was on such massive amounts though it created various secondary issues so of course more medication for that. Poor kid.
I stayed with him the entire time and he had other family members coming and going. Now of course he cannot remember much of anything about the stay (thanks to meds) which is really a good thing given the pain.
His doctor has claimed he is now scoliosis and kyphosis free. It was hard to do but they managed to shift his entire body to be straight. He looks fantastic and the scar is rapidly healing. The three month check up was all good and we are almost ready for his six month one. Some limitations to his activity but basically he is almost back to regular life.
The process has been hard but Max is incredible. He has so much inner strength that we were all in awe of him. He met many things with a smile (sometimes more of a grimace) and tried to keep up his positive attitude. We are all truly blessed to have such an amazing son/brother/grandson.
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