As most of you know, Elias was born with torticollis (on top of all his other problems). Basically its when the neck is twisted, the head tilted toward one side and the chin toward the other. Its usually caused by tightened muscles/tendons. If treated right away with targeted stretching, its usually fully correctable. We've been treating it for the past 19 months with physical therapy, and it has improved SO much! However, we think we're reached a point where its probably not going to improve much more without surgery. The doctors said they think its about 80% corrected, which is pretty good considering where he started! Here's a few pictures showing how far he's come.
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| 1 week old |
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| 6 months old |
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| 1 year old |
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| 18 months old |
As you can see, he's come a long way! It really is hard to tell he still has some torticollis, but when he fatigues or is just sitting relaxed, he'll tend to tilt his head to the left.
Doctors have recommended we look into a surgery that will release the tight muscle so that he doesn't always have that tilt. A couple of our doctors have given their opinions on how they would fix it, and while the prodecure itself is the same, they vary on what they think the recovery will be. One said he'd put Elias in a pinless halo for 3-6 months. We cringed at the thought of him having to wear that brace for so long, on TOP of a leg cast he'll be in when he gets his next foot surgery. Kevin and I were asking ourselves "is it worth it" to put our son through so much if its so minor of a thing compared to the rest of his issues. We were learning towards no. Then we met with another one of his doctors (the one who did the AMAZING removal of his skin tag by his ear). He's done numerous muscle releases like this, and even showed us before and after pictures of his patients. This doctor says with the way he would treat it, Elias wouldn't need a brace of any kind. In fact he wouldn't need anything at all except a bandage leaving the hospital and continued physically therapy.
Its really hard to understand how two doctors vary so differently how to treat something like this. But we trust them both, as everything each has done thus far has been highly effective and successful.
We've decided to go with the second doctor. We've decided that even if it isn't 100% successful, we won't feel like we put Elias through hell and back. And we don't have much to lose considering its not that bad to begin with.
Now its just a matter of deciding when we're going to get the surgery. Should we do it before we move? Or should we wait until his next foot surgery in the fall/winter and do them both together? We're not sure. Kevin thinks we should wait and do them both together. We're going to wait until Gavin comes, get him all situated and squared away as far as a treatment plan goes, and then meet with the doctor again to discuss when we'll do the muscle release.
On another note, tomorrow we go for a growth scan to see how much they think Gavin is weighing. As I said before, if he's dropped to the 10% or less, we'll be having a c-section sometime tomorrow! Otherwise, we're scheduled for a c-section next Wednesday at 11! Either way, Gavin will be here in less than a week!
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