Friday, February 8, 2013

Surgery recovery update

Kinley has been home for a couple of weeks now following her spinal fusion surgery (see post op xray below).  There have been many challenging times for her and us so we are just trying to stay positive and push forward knowing that  better days are ahead.  One encouraging sign is that she is now only taking over the counter medications for pain and is usually able to stay comfortable on the couch. I know she misses her freedom of being able to get down on the floor to play with her dog Maddie or do Just Dance 4 on the Wii.  Our main concern now is controlling a new type of seizure/tremor that we first started noticing about a 7-10 days ago.  Tensing up throughout her body, jerky movements, blinky eyes, and difficulty speaking are the symptoms and it is very hard to watch. She has had partial seizures since she was about 3 yrs old but they have been very well controlled by meds so this new development is frustrating.  We are taking her in next week for another EEG brain scan to confirm that these are seizures and not some other type of neurological issue.  For now we are following the directions of her neurologist and increasing her medication to see if that can help.   Our house has been busy with visits from an RN, CNA, homebound teacher and a PT. Kinley's making some progress with the PT in strengthening her legs and back (yoga is her favorite) but the above mentioned seizures are not only frightening to her (and us) but are certainly keeping her from fully engaging in her post-op physical therapy program.  Kinley really misses school and her friends so we are hoping to get these new tremor/seizures under control so that doesn't further delay her return to school.  We are shooting for late February for her to be able to get back at least on a half day schedule and then transition to full days when she is able to handle that physically.