Its not like its brain surgery or anything....

Faith is in recovery now. Her surgery lasted about four hours and the doctor thought it went well.

The findings of the surgery were very unusual, in fact the Neurosurgeon had never seen anything like this development in his career. This might be a bit confusing so bare with me. During Faith's decompression surgery last month there were a few layers involved for her closure. From inside to out they went in this order...

1. Muscle tissue and spinal nerves
2. Dural Graft (this is like a patch over all of the exposed tissue to prevent leakage of spinal fluid while the dural membrane heals up)
3. Gel substance (not sure what this layer is for)
4. Skin closure

What the Neurosurgeon found during this surgery was that the gel substance applied just below the skin had some how got in under the dural graft and worked it's way into Faith's cerebellum causing the enlarged ventricle we saw in the MRI. Since this was not trapped cerebral fluid pooling in her brain, the doctor felt that a stent was not necessary and that all that was required was the gel substance to be removed from her cerebellum. He also discovered that the same gel had collected around the brain stem. He felt that while it was unlikely that this development would cause Faith's issues with her vocal cords he has not seen this before and did not rule the possibility out.

Time will tell. The doctors have already put in an order to begin weaning Faith off of the respirator.  We are not expecting to much so soon after surgery. We will keep you all posted.