Dec.1, 2008

We are now 1 month post surgery and Emma is doing really well. She is sick of her brace and ready to be free of it. She is back to most of her regular activities but still gets a little fatigued from time to time. Especially in the evening after a long day. She is struggling with some muscle pain that she did not have before the surgery both in her right arm and left shoulder. She appears quite crooked and cannot at this time straighten out her head which tilts toward her left side. When we look back at photos from before the surgery we can see that this tilt was slight, but is now quite pronounced.We are hoping that there may be some change in this after the brace is removed and she can begin to gain some strenght in her neck muscles. We are anticipating seeing the surgeon on Dec. 16th when we are hopful that she will have the brace removed. However, it appears that we will be unable to see the surgeon that actually did the surgery because he will be away and that we will be doing Emma's "post-op" visit with her original surgeon. For this we are a little disappointed because we had wanted to ask some more details about Emma and feel that our questions would be better suited to the Dr. that actually perfomed the operation. We'll see how it all goes. For now, we are praying that her xrays that day show that the surgery has been successful and that she has healed well enough to have that collar off by Christmas.