Cali’s arm had no feeling in it last weekend or she said it didn’t feel right. She also was hoarse on Sunday. Peyton was home in bed with 102 fever and strep throat. So Mindi thought Cali might be getting this. Last Monday she had a basketball game, and played the worst game ever. Dribbled and shot left handed, Mindi said ok we are going to pediatrician on Tuesday. He checked her, ran lots of test, and told her this is serious and needed to see a specialist. He could get her in on Wednesday to see a neurologists at Cook’s Children in Ft. Worth. Wednesday she was put through every test possible, and even got a MRI/Cat scan approved by insurance for that day. They wanted her to stay in FT Worth for appointment on Thursday to see what was next. She wanted to wait until today, because all the family was headed to Galveston for vacation - 3 sisters and 8 kids.Doctor said no to her. Thursday morning everyone left for Galveston, but her and Cali. They did pack the car for Galveston, just in case, whatever they did was not going to happen until today. Wrong!
They told her Cali was scheduled for surgery at noon on Friday. They then spent all day Thursday doing more tests and pre-op. Her C1 vertebrae is the one that controls all the senses, so they needed a base line. The fluid was building up, pushing on the nerve which caused the loss of feeling in her right arm and her no voice. They could tell that it was affecting the inside of her mouth.
Surgery was Friday. The surgeon did find some scar tissue, that he has no idea how it got there (meningitis - undetected as a child or an injury). He carved out the C1 vertebrae that was fused to the scull. He made a larger opening in the scull so the fluids could flow more easily. By Friday night, she was already getting feeling back in her arm. By Saturday, everything had come back but her hand and fingers. Yesterday it was just her fingers.
The doctors and surgeons all said that she is a case they will be talking about for years. She beat all odds very quickly. She did have only a few issues with oxygen and fluid in her lungs, Saturday night and she was nauseated when she first tried to walk. However, she did have a good night, and they will probably let her come home today. Normally they stay in ICU two days and the hospital 5-7 days after this surgery.
God’s part was the cancelation of another patient so Cali could see the neurologist on Wednesday at Cook’s. She got to have surgery on Friday, because of another cancellation of someone else. Everyone in the hospital could not believe that all this took place in less than a week and that they even got insurance to approve everything so quickly. Also the healing so fast and that she did not have to go through a lot of pain. I say this knowing that she still has a long way to go. She is very mellow and somber. She is not eating much, and is going to be restricted for a while on what she can do, which is going to be very hard on her. But God is good - all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment