Resting

We are now in the room with Will, holding him in our arms and rocking him.  He is pretty out of it, is very pale and has a lot of tubes coming out of him but he is able to move all of his limbs and his vital signs are good.  We are rejoicing that he made it through surgery and is now on the road to recovery.

The surgeon said that the surgery went more or less according to plan.  It was no surprise to all of us to hear that our little warrior was strong throughout the procedure.  The surgeon removed the areas that they anticipated, along with an additional section of the temporal lobe to the posterior of his brain.  During surgery, the intraoperative monitoring showed a fairly large amount of abnormal spiking brain waves coming from the posterior of the left temporal lobe. After the area was removed, the abnormal spiking stopped.  This is a VERY good sign, and definitely gives us hope that the surgery could be a success.  He also said that the brain tissue that was removed felt very dense and rubbery, signs that show him that there was cortical dysplasia, or a malformation, present.  Although we will need to wait for the pathology reports to know for sure, we were able to breathe a huge sigh of relief, as we feel like given what they found inside Will's brain, we know in our hearts that proceeding to brain surgery was the right decision.

Brain surgery is not for the faint-hearted

By the time we were able to get into the P-ICU to see him, it had been a very long day.  We were up at 3:00AM, and as you can imagine, stress levels were fairly high throughout the day.  It was no surprise that Kelly's brother Andy felt faint and had to lay down on the couch in Will's room.  Just a few minutes later, Kelly started to pass out and had to join him.  Not sure they will ever hear the end of this one, and of course everyone was ready with cameras to capture the moment.

It sounds like we are in for a long night.  They need to check his vitals every hour throughout the night, and they told us that we should take turns sleeping and watching over Will, so it doesn't sound like there will be much rest for the weary.  In the morning, Will is going to get sedated again (for the 3rd day in a row) for another MRI.  They are hopeful after that is over that we will get to move out of P-ICU and into the regular epilepsy monitoring unit.

Thank you again, everyone, for all of your thoughts, prayers and well wishes.  While we may not be able to respond to every message, we have read all of them and it has helped to keep us strong throughout all of this.  We are truly blessed.