Meeting the Surgeon

We returned to Children's Hospital on Monday, to meet the surgeon.  Also meeting with us was his dedicated surgery nurse.  The surgeon was very impressive, and showed early on that he was thoroughly familiar with our case, and the timeline so far.  He even apologized that things were taking longer than we initially thought they would or should.  The reason for this has to do with the SEEG procedure we will be using in our case.  We will be the first pediatric SEEG case performed by Children's.  The extra time in getting to this point was due to his coordination with a fellow neurosurgeon at UAB.  This surgeon has done a half dozen procedures on adults, as well as being trained in France on the procedure.  Julia's case became of particular interest for three primary reasons: her seizures have been essentially nonresponsive to the variety and combinations of medications we have tried; her likely initiation point of the seizures is deep in her right frontal lobe, and still not well located; and she is a nearly fully grown "pediatric" case, and so a nice first case for the Children's staff.  This raised a question for us.  Were we going to have a rookie doing our surgery?  So I asked him this question directly.  He told us the UAB surgeon would be the "pilot" and he would be "copiloting".  Part way through this discussion, he called a surgery nurse to come join us.  This particular nurse was from Belarus, and spoke Russian, so she came to make sure Julia understood exactly what was being said.  He went into great detail, which was somewhat unnerving to Julia, about the four areas of concern he had: bleeding, infection, neurological damage, and failure to eliminate the seizures.  He went through all the details and probabilities of success of each area. All of this was pretty overwhelming and frightening.  Julia and I talked tonight, and she understands everything - she is still just scared.  I told her of all the people who ask about her almost every day, and all the people already praying for her.  She is a tough young lady.  There are no hysterics or undue drama.  She is trying to stay calm, but it is hard for her to concentrate on school.  She has even come to terms with being bald and can joke about it.  Now we are just waiting to be schedule for the SEEG procedure.