SDR....

Um.... Where to start. Well, I guess the beginning is as good a pace as any. About a year and a half ago, while at Children's, a father stopped Bob and I in the hall way and told us about his child. His son was using a walker like Mikes and if we hadn't heard about it there was a surgery out there that had done miracles for his son. It's called a Selective Dorsal Rizotomy. His family had theirs done in St. Lewis with Dr. Parks. (Dr. Parks is kinda the nations top SDR doctor.) So Bob and I started researching it on line. It seemed like Mike would be a good fit for it, so I asked our physical medical doctor, Dr. Klamar, about it. At first he blew the theory off, and after about 3 visits where I brought it up, he finally started talking to us about it. (I will say that it helped when Bob showed interest in it too.) We where pushing for being sent to St. Lewis, to be seen by Dr. Parks, but Dr. Klamar suggested Dr. Kosnic right there in Children's. Dr. Kosnic is a neurosurgon, who worked with Dr. Elton, Mikes first neurosurgon, and Dr. Riffell, Mikes current neurosurgon. Dr. Kosnic is in the same building, 5 floors above Dr. Klamars office. We know a fair number of the staff at Nation Wide Children's. We trust them, but it was actually a BCMH nurse that convinced me that Dr. Kosnic could do it. (Granted some of it was insurance related, but the clincher was when she said that she would let him do it on her!!) She had been one of his surgery nurses, and would have no issues with him working on her own children. All this took about a year. (So that covers 2009)

2010, lets see... Well we have started the process. We meet with Dr. Kosnic on Tuesday Feb. 2, 2010. He has scheduled a MRI for Mike on Feb. 23, 2010. Bob, Greg, Mike and myself will be going up the night before and we will be at the hospital at 7 am. to start the process. Mike will be put under, have the MRI run, and wake up again. Then we go up to Dr. Kosnic's office and have our apt. with him to schedule the surgery. It could be done sometime in March or April. The recovery period is intense. Mike and I will live in Columbus for 6 weeks. Mike will be IN Children's hospital at least 5 days a week. He will have intense PT for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week for 6 weeks. Bob will continue to go to work. If it's done during the school yr. Greg will continue to go to school 3 days a week, and I will have to find a sitter the other two days a week. There is a slight possibility that our insurance won't allow Mike to stay at Children's. If that's the case then we will either drive to Columbus 5 days a week for 6 weeks, or Mike and I will get an apt. up there. Either way I will probably get an apt. or something up there because I will need a place to sleep, shower and store my stuff. In all this, I don't want to loose sight of Greg, and his needs. But at this moment, it's not fair, but he has to take a back seat. I don't like it and if someone has an idea of how to change it I'd be more than willing to hear it.

Bob has taken this quarter off from school because there is so much going on. I generally support that, but don't want him to fall behind. Oh and before any of this happened, Bob spent a week in South Korea. It's been an interesting year so far, and it's only just begun.