Discouraged

We were called about 7pm and were told the surgery was finished. The surgeons came in and reported that he did very well.....however......when they went to stimulate the nerves before connecting to them, they could not get a response from his muscles. What this means is that it is possible that the muscles in his face have already died - which once dead, they will not come back. If this is truly the case then the graft they did today will not have an impact on the paralysis. In order for it to have an impact, they would need to go back in, take a muscle from his leg and put in his face/cheek. If they need to replace the muscle, this is something they would do approximately when he turns 5 years old.

Due to the lack of response in the muscle, they did not stick to the original plan (which was to attach the grafted nerve to as many branches as possible), they just attached it to the middle trunk. This trunk would enable him to blink, move his cheek and smile but will not allow his brow to move or his lower lip.

However, they did mention that children are resilient and often miraculous (as we can attest to). So even though the muscle appears to have died, we were told by the surgeons they are optimistic.

Recovery was pretty rough as he's vomited a few times and was very upset when he first woke up. He's now resting comfortably thanks to a good dose of morphine.

So as we are most definitely discouraged, we remind ourselves where we were six months ago, how lucky we are to have our sweet boy and that there is still hope for improvement.

We plan on being here for two to three days and I will update again tomorrow.