Pre-Op Videos - Walking

      We took some videos of Beckett walking to compare his legs before & after surgery. You can see that his left leg is not as affected as his right, he's able to put his left heel down when he walks. But he stays on his toes on the right & the right knee/leg turns in, which is why his right hip is being pulled out of socket. Our hope is that both legs will improve after surgery & especially that he will be able to put that right heel down & step forward.

                                     

 

 

Beckett's Surgery Consult

 

       Beckett had his Rhizotomy surgery consultation Monday with Dr Park in St. Louis. We've already been told by one surgeon that we should do the operation but Dr Park is considered the best in the world for this surgery so we wanted to meet with him & see if he would do it. If someone is going to operate on your child's spinal cord you want them to have lots of experience & Dr Park has done over 2500 of these operations with very few complications.

  

       So Dr Park examined Beckett and said he thought the surgery would help his legs, particularly the right leg since it's the one that is so tight. And he agreed to do the surgery!

     

      Couple things though...

 

           1. Beckett's only MRI was done when he was in Vanderbilt in April 2010 so Dr Park would like to see a current MRI before the surgery to see how Beckett's brain looks now. The worst part about that is with Beckett being so young he will have to be put to sleep for the scan. Which means general anesthesia & that always has risks.

 

           2. Dr Park thinks Beckett may also need a 2nd surgery a few months later to cut some of the tendons in Beckett's right leg. If your muscles are constantly contracted & never stretched out then the tendons in that leg can begin to shorten. If this continues then over time the tendons become permanently shortened & the only way to straighten your leg is to have surgery to release those tendons. We are praying that Beckett's tendons are not permanently shortened & maybe we can avoid this 2nd surgery but we really won't know for sure until a few months after his surgery.

          3. Dr Park looked at Beckett's most recent hip xray & said that his right hip is starting to be pulled out of the socket. This is because his muscles are pulling his right knee inward which pulls out on his right hip. The Rhizotomy should help this but it just goes to show that we need to do the surgery now as it's already causing problems for him that would lead to more surgeries later on if we didn't.


       The biggest shock is that we were planning on scheduling the surgery for this summer since we knew they have a wait list & that works best for Patrick's schedule anyway. Well they informed us Monday that they had a couple openings for earlier....as in next month... so we are officially on the schedule for February 21st! We were a little freaked out when they told us it would be so soon. Now that we've had a couple days to think about it though we are glad to go ahead & get it over with. We feel like it will help him & we hate to think about his hip being pulled out so why put it off any longer than we have to. Not to say that we aren't still freaked out & nervous wrecks just thinking about such a major operation though.

       So just pray for no issues with his MRI, it's Feb. 6th, & then for Dr. Park & everyone at St. Louis Childrens Hospital that the surgery goes smoothly & there are no complications and a fast recovery! And thank you so much for all the love & prayers & support we've already received!

 

 Our hotel room view

 Dinner at City Diner

 Glad we got the king bed b/c we ended up  all 3 sleeping in there!

Checking out the fishes in the dr's waiting room

 Little tired on the way home 

 



Beckett babble

     Just thought I'd post a quick video of Beckett. He was talking up a storm the other day & I finally got him on video doing animal noises.