Beginning of surgery

Updates from mom..

Josiah slept well last night and was ready to go today. I don't think he knew what he was getting into. Although, I don't think we do either. When we met with the Doctor before surgery he explained that plans have changed a little. He shared all of Josiah's information with his fellow doctors to get more imput on the situation. They have all said that very few patients have they ever seen to need as much reconstruction as Josiah does. So for right now the plan is to cut and turn both upper and lower leg bones to re-position his legs forward. They will then do a dye test to see how much cartilage his hips actually have (that doesn't show up on an x-ray). If he has more cartilage than they think, they can take the cartilage and stretch it to reconstruct a hip socket and mold it to the cut bone. More than likely this is not going to happen. If there is no cartilage then they will postpone a further surgery to cut the pelvic bone and reconstruct a socket. This causes massive bleeding so they didn't want to take the extra risk by adding this procedure to his current one. If just the upper hip bones and lower leg bones are cut to turn the legs forward the surgery should be about 7 hours. They are planning on waking him up after the surgery and giving him a shot in his spine for the pain. Waking him up sooner helps to reduce risk of infection, especially in the lungs. Once the pain shot runs out he will be in A LOT of pain. The average stay is still 5-7 days and that is mainly for pain management and to get him to eat.

We just received our first update from the nurse. Josiah went back to surgery around 7:15am and they called around 9:30am to say they finally got him intubated and all the IVs in. They will be monitoring him consistently and will give us updates every hour and 1/2. Right now they have just gotten started but Josiah is doing well. Please pray that the extubation goes well so he will be transferred to the 8th floor and not PICU. Also, for his appetite to come back and pain management. We will keep you posted when we know anything new. Thank you so much for praying for our little guy, he is such a trooper.

God bless,

Josiah's mommy and daddy