Amelia will have surgery

Oh boy! And it is happening. We were afraid of it and tried to prepare for it but the news still came as a bit of a shock.... Yesterday's MRI clearly confirmed that there is a foramen magnum stenosis and mild indentation of the cervical medullary junction so Amelia is scheduled to have decompression surgery July 6th.

The MRI lasted only 5 minutes but for me and Ami it was the worst, longest, creepiest 5 minutes in our life together.... I was inside the tube with her, it did not help her a lot as I was trying to restrain her and she hated it! Luckily there was no anesthesia involved. I did not know that MRI was so noisy! They gave us ear plugs but it only helped a little.

Then we saw pediatric neurosurgeon and he said that he would not like to wait too long with the surgery. Amelia would not "outgrow" it and it can only get worse pressing the spinal cord. The bad thing is that the spinal fluids cannot flow freely so her head had grown more than it supposed to. The not-so-great results of the sleep study are most likely caused by this compression.

So we hope and pray for the best results, successful surgery, and speedy recovery but at the same time we are afraid of complications, nerve damage etc. The doc said it is "a serious surgery". Please send Amelia your best.....