Thank you everyone for praying for us! Right now Rachel is resting and has eaten half a container of yogurt and drank a lot of apple juice throughout the day. We are in ICU so that they can manage her pain and keep her sedated, primarily because she is supposed to lie flat for the first 48 hours -- to limit the buildup of too much internal fluid pressure at the incision locations (as her body works to replace the spinal fluid lost during surgery and also to heal the incisions).
After the surgery this morning, Dr. Mapstone said that both surgeries went very well.
Also, they were using a special monitoring system throughout the procedures wherein a neurologist remotely monitors her synaptic responses. This helps alert the neurosurgeon if he starts getting too close to any nerves. Dr. Mapstone said that Rachel's synaptic responses were better after the surgery than they were before. This means that her spinal cord was indeed being stretched and stressed by the tethering and that she would almost certainly have experienced long-term nerve damage without the procedures.
We thank God for his watch-care over this precious girl and for allowing us to witness firsthand His grace and mercy over her!
Please continue to pray for peace and rest. Each time she wakes up, she is agitated and anxious and upset. She just doesn't like having so many restrictions. Thankfully the night nurse let us take off one arm restrictor around her iv. We just put gauze around it, so she had more movement.
Update Wednesday morning: She has been awake a couple of times since about 3 and she is remarkably less angry. She is not smiling yet, but she ate more yogurt and talked to me more like her normal self.
Praying for Rachel and all the family! His arms are around you. Love from Alice and Russ
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