Nine Hours Later...

...and Ethan finally came out of surgery. It took almost another hour for them to have him settled in critical care before they let us see him.

Before we were able to see him, the surgeon came to talk to us and let us know that surgery did not go quite as planned. It took a long time to access his airway and his veins and then once surgery started, they found that parts of Ethan's spine had spontaneously fused. So instead of the single osteotomy (cutting into the bone to allow it to collapse upon itself), they had to do six. The spinal rods were removed and the screws for the new rods were secured. Unfortunately, they were having troubles keeping Ethan's blood pressure high enough and they had to stop the surgery before it could be finished.

Ethan has been in the critical care unit since Tuesday on a breathing tube (intubated) and sedated. He is also receiving continuous pain meds. Today they were able to wean him off the low blood pressure medication and restart his tube feeds. He also received a blood transfusion to bring up his red blood cell count.

Tomorrow morning he goes back into surgery to finish what they started on Tuesday. Please send any spare good wishes you have, he could use all the extra positive energy to help him through this. They are anticipating it shouldn't take more the 3 hours.

Fingers crossed it goes smoothly and he can start a full recovery tomorrow!