Neurosurgeon

We had to get up at 5:30 in order to get ready and get to our appointment in time since it was all the way in Ft. Worth. It was a 8. Wait was not very long. We were the only ones there. Dr. Honeycut is a man. His first name was Johnnie so we thought he might be a woman but we were wrong. Anyway, seems to be an excellent doctor. He took time to explain everything to us. Showed us the MRI scan and explained it to us. He thinks that the cord looks tethered because it is down too low and it is stretched straight thru the spinal column instead of curving with the spinal column. Also said that he spine alignment is slightly abnormal which could be cause be her arthrogryposis condition. He did not see any boney abnormalities and Scottish Rite indicated when they did the xrays that they did not see any either but we may have them look again or at least double check with Dr. Herring that they looked at her whole spine and that is the case for everything, not just the neck. So he told us about the surgery. Did not push it on us but explained that the reason to do it now is that they have to remove some of the bone and that will grow back together most likely when she is young. If she is older she will have more problems growing it back. Also, the tethered spine can cause numbness, leg pain, and bladder and bowel control issues. Once the bladder issues appear you can do the the surgery but it may not fix the damage that has already been done. On the other hand since it seems she is not experiencing any of these symptoms as of now we could wait and just watch her. Risks of the surgery are going under anestheisa, infection, and that there is a very low possiblity that it could make things worse. Risks of not doing it are that she would have the issues listed above. The surgery takes less than an hour. On the MRI they did he thought maybe that the tip of the spinal cord was in a strange position as well and wanted to do a MRI right before she goes in to surgery. The reason is that he said the MRI was poor quality because when you do them under 3 months of age their heart rate and breathing is so rapid that even when they are sedated it causes micro movements and can blur and distort the images. So he would like to do one to be sure that he is seeing what he thinks he sees is going on. So we will talk about it and then schedule a surgery about 2 months out if we decide to go with it. As of now we are thinking that we will do it just because we've had three different people say that it looks tethered and because we feel like if we do it now she will have a much easier time healing than if we wait til she is older. We still need to pray and discuss for sure but we both felt very comfortable with this doctor. At least he explained all the sides of what was going on and what our options were. Way better than what we got from the ENT. So I guess prayers can be that when he does the MRI before surgery, if we go that route, that everything will be fine and the surgery won't need to take place or that it will be a straightforward surgery and that there will not be any other issues with anything except the tethering.