Surgery Day

Today Seth had the first of his surgeries in an attempt to alleviate his seizures. We arrived at Children’s at 6:30am and began preparations for Seth’s 8:30am surgery for insertion of the grids. Seth was happy this morning, we even saw a little of his usual silliness, but somewhat nervous as well. Shortly after 8:30am we said goodbye, and Seth was taken back to surgery. We received our first update around 10:30am that everything was going according to plan, and received another update a couple hours later from his neurologist that they had successfully placed the grids and were getting ready to close. We spoke with Seth’s neurosurgeon after surgery was completed, and breathed a sigh of relief that the first step had gone well. After being in recovery, Seth was taken for a CT scan and we met up with him around 4pm when he arrived in the PICU. Seth will stay in the PICU for the next day or so for monitoring before he is moved to the neuro unit.

Seth has 102 leads connected to his brain and skull, both internally and externally, to monitor his brain activity. We continue to see almost constant spikes in brain activity as he goes to sleep and while he is sleeping, but he has not had any seizures yet. He is quite uncomfortable this evening, as he has significant headache pain and is suffering from nausea due to the anesthesia. It is a helpless feeling when your child hurts and there is little you can do to make things better. I know he is comforted that his dad and I are here with him, so that is our purpose right now, just to provide what comfort we can. And once again, we wait…