Choices.

I met with the neurosurgeon on Friday. He was really great, answered my many questions and reassured me that they do this type of surgery all the time. I felt so much calmer after talking to him and becoming more informed. He also gave us a choice to do the surgery one of two ways.

1. Endoscopic surgery, which is less invasive, has less scaring and blood loss and a faster recovery time. It is a relatively new procedure and this doctor has only done it 15 times, total. The downside to doing it this way is the surgeon can not see everything as well and it takes much longer to see results. Everett would have to wear a helmet 23 hours a day for a year.

2. Open surgery. In this procedure, they make an incision from one ear to the other and pull the scalp back to cut out the fused skull bone. Surgery is longer, more of a chance of blood transfusion, and a longer recovery time. But, results are immediate, so if he had to wear a helmet at all, it would not be for long. Plus the surgeon can see everything better during surgery.

The surgeon is leaving the decision up to us, which means we will be praying like crazy to feel peace with our decision. He also wants to do the surgery in the next week or two. The earlier the better. In fact they can really only do the endoscopic surgery until he is 3 months old. But he said Everett looks really healthy, and he has "really great tone for a baby his age". Meaning he is not a sloppy baby and has no signs of any of the genetic diseases that often accompany craniosynostosis. Also, his coronal sutures have not fused, so all in all it was a positive meeting!

Here are some pictures of Everetts head. His brain can not grow out, so it is growing front to back. It is textbook sagittal synostosis head:).





I love this picture with his cute little eye peeking out.

Diagnosis.

Our sweet baby boy was diagnosed with Craniosynostosis this week. Basically that means the sutures in his skull fused too soon and are causing irregular bone and brain growth. You can find more information on that here. We know his sagittal suture is fused and possibly part of his coronal. Tomorrow I will meet with a neurosurgeon at CHOC, they will run a few more tests, and get more information on his specific problems. Everett will definitely need surgery, probably in the next month or so. The surgery consists of cutting out the fused bone and reshaping the remaining bone, so the brain can grow and develop. Without surgery, the brain would most likely be damaged and the shape of his head would become more and more deformed.