Post-op

It is just now starting to hit me that I have spent the day in the hospital while my daughter had brain surgery.  It's not every day that one can say that (thankfully).  This turned out to be a fairly lengthy procedure.  They took Julia just after 10:00 am, put her under, put in her IVs, then did some precise marking on her head and I think they mounted the frame onto her head.  Then they took her down for a CT scan, so they knew exactly where the frame was mounted with relation to her skull.  Back to the operating room.  Julia had a robot attached to the frame to precisely guide the drill to the correct locations.  The first couple of holes took 20 minutes each, but they got faster as they all got comfortable with the procedure, and the time per hole dropped to under 10 minutes.  It was somewhere around 4:30 to 5:00 pm before they were done.  Then they took her down again, for another CT, to check the placement of the electrodes and check for bleeding, or any other issues.  The doctor told us there were as many as 20-25 people participating in this procedure in some way or another.  He was very pleased with the outcome and cooperation of everyone.  Julia will spend the night in ICU, and she has all sorts of wires attached to her to monitor her condition, including having a brain scan monitor attached to all of those 13 new leads planted in her brain.  Here is a picture of what they are seeing.