Dr Update

So Dallas was great. It was a long drive out 13.5hrs with all the stops we needed to make on Thursday, but we made it through in one day. Friday we saw Dr. Fearon and he was absolutely great. He really knows Apert kids. This is kind of what he's built his practice around and he had written a good number of the 'books' on treating Apert Syndrome and some of the techniques. Basically going to Dallas will take the place of 5 of our current Doctors. We would eliminate the need to see the hand surgeon, the foot surgeon, neurologist, neurosurgeon and craniofacial surgeon we have locally. He can monitor Isaiah from afar with MRI's ordered by our pediatrician, and reports from our eye doctor that can monitor his intercranial pressure (ICP) by looking at his optic nerves. We've started the insurance petitioning process and if all goes well he'll have his first hand/foot separation in April with the second one 12 weeks later. He basically tries to get as much done in one session of surgery as possible to eliminate multiple times of anesthetic and hospitalization. So if he needed additional small surgeries like tubes in the ear for fluid drainage or if he needed additional hand work when he's in for a cranial vault they would try to do it at the same time. It's all about improving his quality of life and keeping him out of the hospital less, and it potentially costs less because you eliminate multiple things involved with each surgery.

We were staying with my cousin Angie and her husband Michael (and their son Karsten) which made everything that much more affordable. We ended up going to the Ft Worth zoo saturday morning and started out on the road that afternoon to split up the drive. We stopped off in Vicksburg, MS for the night and finished off the trip on Sunday so I wouldn't be completely beat for work on manday.

It was a good idea, but all the driving and travel still really took it all out of me and I was just exhausted Monday and have had the onset of a cold since then. I've just got a tickle in the back of my throat from my nose constantly draining and have been coughing a bunch, but otherwise I feel fine. The more sleep I get the better I feel. I can't imagine how I would be feeling if we had decided to drive all the way through on Sunday.