My surgery will be this coming Friday February 17th at 1:15 p.m. It was supposed to be the following week, but it was moved up for logistical reasons on the side of the hospital. The projected hospital stay is 4-5 days but I can almost guarantee that I will not be in the hospital that long! I have never stayed more than two nights in the hospital after a surgery and I have had much more invasive surgeries than this one, so I can't imagine I will be in the hospital any longer than two days this time. My hope would be to come home on Sunday, but they may force me to stay until Monday because they don't like to discharge on weekends.
The surgery is booked to be about 4 hours long, which in the grand scheme of things is relatively short. Both my original decompression surgery and my first craniocervical fusion were about 7 hours long, so this is significantly shorter than those. Obviously this time may increase if the surgery is more difficult for any reason, but 4 hours is their rough estimate.
Now for a brief explanation of the surgery. I will post the same picture that I posted in my last update just to help explain the surgery.
The hardware on the left side of my skull will be disconnected from the hardware that is in my cervical spine. The skull hardware will then be removed from my skull completely.
The ideal place to attach hardware to is the center of the back of your skull. This piece of bone was removed from my skull during my Chiari decompression surgery to make room for the cerebellar tonsils (part of the brain) that was herniating into my spinal column. So since this piece is missing my original fusion was done next to this spot, slightly further over than what is shown in this picture. Well as you move laterally out from the center of your skull it gets thinner and thinner. We have no choice but to move over since the spot that my first fusion was done did not fuse properly. We hope that this will be alright, but it may prove challenging for the surgeon to get the screws solidly into the bone since the bone will be thinner.
Once the new screws and hardware are secured to my skull the rods connecting this new hardware to the cervical hardware already in place will be reattached. After this a substance called bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) will be laid down. This substance helps to induce the formation of new bone over the hardware. Ultimately I need to form bone over the hardware to secure it in place. This new bone formation is what causes the fusion to be solid.
My nerves will be monitored throughout the entire procedure because they will be working so close to my spinal cord and brain stem. This will help them ensure that my fusion holds my head and spine in the correct alignment and that they do not damage any nerves during the procedure.
I have done all of my pre-op appointments over the last couple of weeks including getting blood work done, having a physical, and meeting with anesthesia and everything should be good to go for Friday. I am just working on getting all of my school stuff taken care of before then, but honestly I could not be more ready for this surgery! My energy is extremely low, I have lots of headaches, and my neck is bothering me more and more. My body has been telling me something is wrong neurologically for the past 8 months and just this past month or so I have felt like my body is exhausted. I am so grateful that my surgeon got me in so quickly, but that in itself is worrying. I was scheduled so quickly because he is treating my case as an emergency case. He is worried that the loose screws may come loose and dislodge. My brain stem is also under pressure again because of the instability present in my craniocervical joint. This could cause permanent damage, more than it did prior to my last fusion, so we need to act quickly to avoid any further damage. My surgeon is having to cancel many of his surgeries due to there being no rooms available at the hospital (it is a children's hospital and sadly this flu season has been extremely difficult on very young children in my area), but he refuses to cancel mine because he sees how critical my case is.
All prayers and well wishes are much appreciated and I will be sure to update as soon as I can!
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