Surgery Day July 8th 2008!

8:30~This is Charity signing on.

Dr. Tolo completed the surgery, but when they woke Isaac up to check his progress, he wasn't able to move his legs.

They just went back in to open him up again, and to try to find the problem. Please join us in praying for Issac. Pray that he gets full function back in his legs and that they can finish the surgery.

It has been 12 hours and Dr.Tolo has got to be exhausted..and it looks like they may have quite a few hours ahead of them.

Please also pray for Jocelyn as well as her friends and family. Pray that they will have strength for the hours ahead.

-Charity

6:00pm~So they are done "coring" in Isaac's spine which is where they make the correction by coring into the bone in the spine. Right now they are installing the rods and cage and are closing. They said that they had to remove a few of Isaac's ribs and that they were the size of toothpicks. We have surpassed the 9 hour mark, but they said that Isaac has been incredible. It has gone so smoothly, but they are working very slowly because of how sensitive the area is. We should be done in about an hour... pray we are done in an hour. I am done. I'm so tired and Isaac has been under for more than 10 hours. They also were able to give him back some of his own blood which they said is good. So he's doing so well. I can't wait to see him.

This has all been so surreal. I have been walking around today in a weird daze. It feels like I am waiting to pick him up from school or something. It feels strange to me that his bump is pretty much gone. I can't wait to see him... so we are almost there!

3:30pm~ We just got an update. They are about 2.5 hours from being finished. They have been pretty successful and they are installing rods on the exterior of the spine and a cage on the interior portion of the spine. The felt that both were necessary to complete the stabilization. They will be finishing up installing the hardware and will then close him up. I should have another update in about 1.5 hours. Dr. Tolo's PA Ali said that Isaac is doing really well so far and it has gone pretty smoothly!

12:30pm~Ok I found out that it took about 2 hours just to access the damaged area. Now that they are there they're applying screws and temporary rods so that they can stabilize the spine. Once he's stabilized they will begin to actually take out the damaged area and begin to fix the curvature. So he's right on track so far and is doing well! More to come!

11:25am~ They just called up and everything is going fine. They are beginning to put the screws into the bones... to be honest I have no idea what this means or where it puts us in the surgery, but they did say he is doing well... I'm going to go and find out what this all means!

9:15am~ Isaac's in surgery... they gave him the "happy juice" and he was zonked out. It was pretty funny. He seemed ready going in there. They did say two weeks ago that they could fix him 80-90% and are now saying 40-60% so he will still have some sort of bump when they are done, it with just be a lot smaller. I'll update as we go!