Neurosurgeon

We got the CT scan Monday.

Emma had a busy week, A CT scan(Mon), audiologist apt(Thur), ENT apt(Fri), neurosurgery apt. (Fri)

the audiologist and ENT apt. have taken me a year to get scheduled, she needs surgery to have the tubes in her ears drums removed they usually fall out before 2 years and hers have been in for 5 years. We run a risk of having a permenant hole in her ear drum. That surgery will happen after we take care of the bigger brain problem!

We got our apt with the neurosurgeon moved from Feb. 11 to Friday Jan. 7th.

We have decided to do surgery before Emma's symptoms get worse.

Our neurosurgeon at loma linda has an opening on Jan 27th. Or we might wait till March 7th durning Nate's spring break.

Our doctor here suggest we proceed with decompression surgery. Which would involve removing a section of the back of her skull (a craniotomy), and removing part of her c-1 vertebra. Opening up the dura (membrane your brain and spine are in), and patching it. and also removing part of the cerebellar tonsil (brain tissue in the spinal cord). I know it's scary.

Our doctor in AZ suggest we do more to stabilize her Platybasia & Basilar invagination (The bones that are putting pressure on her brain stem.) One approach he suggested is to go in through her mouth remove the malformed bones and put a new bone in that is harvested from her rib or hip. Then you would flip her over and fuse the bones by putting some "hardware" screws or brackets to stabilize the spine, there would also be some form of decompression done on the back of the skull, i know even more scary!

We still need to discuss with Az Doc more after he has seen the CT Scan. Before we decide exactly what we are going to do. We might also be looking to get a third opinion but i fear he will just bring up more options and less decisions. I really like both our doctors and feel they are both qualified to do a good job their are just lots of different approached on how to handle things like this.