Surgery Update

Jackson's surgery began at about 8:30 AM this morning and was completed at around Noon. Currently, we are staying at the PICU at Devos Chilren's Hospital in Grand Rapids. Overall, the decompression surgery was successful for the procedure that Jackson was in for. The neurosurgeon had to remove only C1, which we are thankful for since we were not sure if he was going to have to go down into C2, C3, C4. So in those regards...things went well. As the neurosurgeon put it, Jackson was a patient of "firsts". The "first" patient he has ever had with M-CM syndrome, so he was not sure what to expect when he went in. Just like Jackson's body has hemihypertrophy (one side larger than the other), so was his brain, which the nerosurgeon said was considerable (again not an abnormal trait for kids with this syndrome). Due to the overgrowth of his brain, this caused a lot compression, so basically he had to put in the largest patch he has ever put in while doing this surgery. We are praying that he does not have any cerebral spinal fluid leaks or infections. He seems to be doing as well as can be expected. We will keep you updated as we know more...