Surgery update #prayingforcolby #dystonia

Colby went back into surgery like a champ! He got a little anxious as he rolled away in the red wagon but he smiled at us as he turned the corner.

We spoke with the neurosurgeon this morning and he said he anticipated the surgery taking about 5 hours. Its now been 3 hours and when I spoke with the nurse a few minutes ago she said they are going a bit slower than planned. She didn’t elaborate other than to say that he is doing fine, handling the anesthesia fine and he looks good.

The electrodes are in place and they are mapping his brain frequencies. Once they are satisfied with the placements they will go for another CAT scan. He had one before they implanted to make sure that the brace they placed around his head was in the correct place and that they could access the right area.

He will have an incision across the top of his head in between his ears. They drilled two holes to get the electrodes in. Once they are satisfied with everything they will put plastic caps in the holes.  The bone should eventually grow back but it can take 1 to 2 years.

After they close up his head they will run the wire down to the generator and place that in his stomach. This morning the surgeon wasn’t sure if they would go with one larger generator or two smaller ones. If there are two smaller ones he will have two incisions in his abdomen and two wires up to his head. He said it’s purely a matter of how much space he has to work with and he wouldn’t know what he would do until they got in there.

He thought we would be here for about three days depending on how Colby feels.

That’s about all I’ve got right now. If you are reading this from Facebook I forgot to tell you that the #prayingforcolby marks in my updates are so that people following along on twitter know when I update. Anyway there’s my random thought for the day. Hopefully all of that made sense typed out.

Tagged as: Colby, Deep Brain Stimulation