Rhyan's Surgical Consult

Its late and i'm tired and i've repeated this story a minimum of 8 times today, so i'll keep it brief and promise to post more details later.

Rhyan had her surgical consult with Dr Burnstein today. Jeff took the afternoon off and went with me and i'm glad. Dr. B was very nice but does think Rhyan should have surgery. So we are on his schedule for an outpatient surgery on Friday, April 23. We dont have a time yet and i've not had time to read over all the materials in order that i be able to share all the details of the surgery, yet.

What we do know is that the incision will be behind her left ear and will be done with endoscopic tools. It will take about an hour. He feels certain that she has scar tissue built up on the muscle and says that while therapy has released a good bit of the muscle, there is more that simply will not release w/o surgery. She will wear a soft collar for about a week after and we should expect about a day for recovery (kids are resilient, they say, and prefer to play over throwing a pity party like us adults!).

Dr B actually developed this particular approach to the surgery (doing it endoscopically) and by doing so he is able to hide the scar and avoid cutting nerves that could potentially lead to the atrophy of the lower part of the muscle. This will allow her neck to look normal :-) He is the only dr in the world to do this surgery in this particular way and has performed it on over 400 babies since developing the approach. He says its "quite easy" to do and that is really not painful for the babies. I trust him. He seems like good people :-)

Rhyan was an absolute angel while we were at his office. She missed her afternoon nap (short of the catnaps she got on the way there and back) but was so well behaved. She really is such a blessing. I hate that she has to go through all of this, but it was so nice to hear the words "after surgery you'll do 6-8 weeks of physical therapy and then she'll be DONE". Done? What does that mean?! HA! What will we do with ourselves if we're not going to weekly therapy appointments for the rest of our lives?! :-)

So i didnt keep it all that short and did give details. I guess i got a burst of typing energy. I really do plan to post pics soon. I caught some cute ones in the tub the other day. She's really SO much fun these days. If i havent mentioned it, she's pulling up on EVERYTHING. Falling a alot and getting lots of bumps and bruises, but with each day she's standing longer and longer. She tries taking her hands off of whatever she's propped up on sometimes (and subsequently falls...). We're trying hard to not react to her falling so that she wont react. I think it's going well. She'll fall, look to us and if we dont look at her she'll fuss just a little and then go on. If we do look at her, all heck breaks loose and she cries. The girl knows how to milk a cow, what can i say?

I love her, thats all i know :-)