Life After Surgery

Well, we've been home now about 30 hours and things are slowly progressing back to normal.  It's definitely been a challenge keeping an eye on Henley and our other 2 children while still trying to do stuff around the house.  Henley has managed twice now to make it all the way up the stairs without us even knowing.  Luckily, as of yet, she has not had any falls or accidents.  With the exception of a slightly stiff neck, she really looks like nothing even happened to her.  We are switching off between ibuprofen and tylenol throughout the day and have not even needed the hydrocodone, which is fortunate because she hates the taste of it.  Even Dr. Roberts commented that she looked at 24 hours like most people do at 3 days post op.  He explained that the more muscle mass is located around the neck the more difficult the recovery.  This is the main reason Henley has done so well in recovery because she has very little muscle mass.

As far as Henley's symptoms, Dr. Roberts told us that we really can't expect to see any reduction in symptoms for at least 3 months, and that the space around her brain could continue to decompress for up to 6 months.  We are to follow up with Dr. Roberts' NP in a month so they can check her incision.  We follow up with Dr. Roberts in 3 months to discuss how she is doing symptomatically.  He also mentioned that we will have an MRI done in 6 months.

Thanks so much to those of you that have signed up to bring us food. This is really one of our most pressing needs at the moment, and will become even greater when I return back to work next week. For now we leave you with the before and after pictures.