No Back Surgery, For now

Today I have had several people contact me looking for updates.

Judy is doing well, recovering beautifully. She over did a little bit on Sunday when she had her follow up appointment for her leg and then went to see Greg. She is surprising us all with how well emotionally she is doing. She is a strong lady, definately has some Stokes in her :)

Greg is stable. After the incident Wendy described with Greg pulling his breathing tube out his numbers went down a bit (to be expected when you pull your breathing tube out, there is some readjustment time). They also found that Greg had quite a bit of fluid in his chest cavity around his lungs. They felt it best to perform a proceedure to add chest tubes to drain the fluid. The proceedure was complete on Monday afternoon.

Matt and I, Wendy, and Jenn and Brad went down the the hospital yesterday to check in on Greg and also meet with the Neurosurgeon. Greg's numbers are improving, they have put him back on blood pressure medication slightly to bring his pressure up a tad. His breathing machine is down to only 40% oxygen which is wonderful and he keeps initiating his own breaths.

When we met with the Neurosurgeon, he told us that at this point they will not be performing back surgery. The whole purpose of adding hardware into his back would be to secure things in place long enough for the bones to heal themselves and fuse. Since Greg has been lying still, his bones can actually start to heal and fuse without the surgery. Once he is off the ventilator and chest tubes he can start physical therapy. At that point, to add further stability and allow him to start learning how to use his wheelchair, they will fit him with a custom brace to hold his back and neck in alignment. Hopefully it will heal well and fuse itself and we can skip surgery all together, but if it doesn't fuse or doesn't heal properly they will re evaluate the possibility of surgery at a later date. So lets pray for his spine to heal well, surgery just adds further risk, so this hiccup is possibly a blessing after all.