April's Journey - Surgery Update 11:27AM 3/29/12



Immediately BEFORE Surgery

Surgery began around 7:30 AM. At 10:15 we had already finished talking with the Dr. Patrick after Ernie's surgery and everything went well from his perspective. He felt that the surgery went smoothly and even quicker than he had anticipated. After removing the bone on the back of his neck, he could immediately see the pressure on the spinal cord had been relieved. He felt this would give Ernie the best possible chance of halting the progression of pain as well as giving him the best possible chance of recovering.   

A Pre-Op Blessing: As we noticed that we were about 20 minutes behind the anticipated start time for the surgery, a kind lady walked in and introduced herself as the Nerve Monitoring Tech. It is specialized equipment to monitor the performance of the nerves before, during and after surgery.  She had a case that had just canceled 5 minutes prior and was now available for Ernie's surgery. We found out later from the Doctor that had her case not canceled, they would have postponed surgery.  So our apparent delay was actually a perfectly timed Divine appointment!  That is your prayers at work, to be sure! Thank you!

Some of the details:  There was no disc replacement. Sometimes on these surgeries they removed the intervetebral discs and repack it with bone. In Ernie's case, they did utilize his bone, which they ground into a powder, to repack in-between the vertebrae, but did not need to remove the discs. We count that as a blessing. 

He is currently 'coming out of the fog' of the anesthesia in a recovery room, but if they have adequate beds, we may be able to see him in the next hour or so.