She is thoroughly enjoying her new school. Finally. They sing all the time, and Emma comes home singing and doing all the motions. She will burst into spontaneous song and dance in the car, too - precious. She has learned how to write her name and really enjoys practicing her writing.
As for her surgery recovery, we still have not seen any improvements in her symptoms. A couple interesting things happened this morning, though. I have had my doubts about the orthopedist she sees at Shriner's - they basically missed her scoliosis at one visit and then had a very strong reaction to how bad it was at the next one. I asked why it had gotten so much worse by the second visit to see if he would be truthful with me...and he was. He basically told me they whiffed on the first one.
Even before that scoliosis debacle, we have been visiting another orthopedist for a second opinion. Boy am I glad we see him. This morning was a routine visit with doc #2, and when I expressed my frustrations about the scoliosis to him again, he decided to take some quick x-rays of Emma himself. Since Emma can't stand up, her x-rays at Shriner's had to be taken sitting with her back against a wall. Russell went back with Emma today, so I'm not sure how they accomplished it, but they got her x-rays today of Emma standing. Think about your own posture - aren't you more slouched and curvy when you sit? Duh. You need to be standing for a spine x-ray. So the orthopedist today told us that her scoliosis isn't as bad as we were led to believe it was. Instead of her spinal curve being 50-something degrees, he estimates it's actually closer to 30-something degrees. Still there, just not as bad. So what does that mean?
There's a surgery being done for kids with scoliosis that helps slowly straighten the spine through periodic adjustments to some implanted "ribs." It's called a VEPTR. Sorry to be rude and blunt, but you can look it up if you want. It's too much for me to go into right now. Anyway, if Emma is a good candidate for this procedure in the future, it won't be as intense or long-lasting if the scoliosis starts out at a milder level.
The other thing we found isn't as great. Emma had follow-up MRI's a couple weeks ago to provide comparative films to those taken in December. Dr. Troup will look at them and tell us what he thinks about the results of the surgeries. We haven't seen him yet, but since all these doctors are in the Greenville Health System, they can pull up anything in a patient's records. The orthopedist this morning pulled up the MRI's and told us what the radiologist's notes said. Cervical MRI (neck) - no change. Thoracic MRI (mid-back) - no change. Here's where I stopped him. No change? Does that mean the syrinx that was drained has already filled back up again? After more careful reading of the notes, the doctor confirmed that that's what the radiologist's notes say. He quickly abandoned the reading of the MRI's with a comment about Dr. Troup being the best at reading them, and we just moved on. Sigh.
If the syrinx fills up on its own, that means that we'll be looking at ANOTHER surgery. This one will involve putting a shunt on her spine to constantly drain the syrinx. I haven't looked into the specifics of this surgery yet, though - no need to worry about it now.
Ok, now for some fun stuff.
Being pampered at the salon:
Clemson baseball game:
Easter:
Sorry to hear that there has been no change in Emma's symptoms.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to see her lovely smile and the bunny dress is gorgeous.