Surgery Update

Yesterday Carson had his surgery here in Texas. We got to the hospital at 6:00 am for pre-op and waiting in the holding area until Dr. Fearon arrived. When he showed up, he and the OR nurse noticed that we were tired, and told us that we could go back to the hotel to sleep until the surgery was done. That was so nice of them to do that since most of the time parents are required to stay at the hospital during the procedure. The surgery lasted 5.5 hours. We met again with Dr. Fearon in the parent’s waiting room after everything was done.

He said that surgery went very well. He said that Carson’s cleft pallete was a very difficult repair and that he was glad he was the one that performed the surgery. He said that even a doctor with cleft pallete experience would have had a challenge with it if they had not had a lot of experience with Apert kids. Along with separating the fingers and toes, Dr. Fearon also performed a tarsorrhaphy; a procedure where the outside corners of the eyelids are sewn together to narrow the opening of the eyes. He said that Carson’s right eye was about to herniate and that it was very good we did this procedure. All in all, the surgery was a success and Carson has been recovering well.

Dr. Fearon did mention a few times that he thinks Carson may require a shunt to drain off excessive fluid that is in his head. Dr. Fearon believes that the longer you wait to do a child’s first cranial vault surgery, that the fewer vault surgeries Carson would require in the future. He is considering placing a shunt to give us a little more time before Carson’s first cranial vault. Without it, we’d need to do the surgery in 2-3 months. The doctors ran an MRI last night and Dr. Fearon is meeting with us this morning to discuss the results. Hopefully it will show nothing needs to be done. If something needs to be done, then we have some big choices as to where and when we need to do it. More news on this later today.