A lot more educated

So, we've been doing a TON of research. I'm pretty much past the overwhelming initial emotion and shock, and now just determined to learn as much about it as possible. I talked to the nurse coordinator here, and she answered a bunch of our questions.

We are looking into two different routes.

1) Open surgery (called CVR - cranial vault reconstruction) - This is where they cut a zigzag line across the top of his head from ear to ear, and cut out the bone along the suture, and make some more cuts in order to reconstruct his skull. This takes about 4-8 hours, and performed by a neurosurgeon and a cranio-facial (plastic) surgeon. If we go with this route, it would be done right here in Austin in march at the Dell childrens hospital, which is the cutting edge for children's hospitals. He'd require 2 months of minimal activity, but no helmet is required.

2) Endoscopic surgery - This is claimed to be "less invasive", where they make 2-2 inch incisions, and go in endoscopically and cut and remove the bone. Supposed to be less bleeding, less recovery, less scar, faster healing, etc. Only drawback (if you consider this a drawback) is that he would have to wear a helmet to reshape his head for maybe a year. The helmet is required, as they don't reshape the head during the surgery like they do in the CVR approach, since it isn't completely open. Only thing on this one is Connor MAY be too old already for this procedure. They like to do this one when the babies are 3-6 months old, since the bones are softer. If we went with this option, we'd have to go somewhere else.

So, with that said, we called San Antonio University Health Systems today, and the nurse research coordinator is supposed to call us back. We want to meet with them to discuss the possibility of endoscopic (and also get a 2nd opinion while we're there). The doctors there at this hospital pioneered the endoscopic approach, so we're hoping they have lots of data about it, and it's success rate v. the traditional open approach.

Some drawbacks we've read to endoscopic is that it "may" require a 2nd surgery later, but we'd like to get some information on it from the docs in San Antonio, as they didn't have a lot of data regarding this at our current hospital.

We have a 2nd appointment with the doctors here in January, so by then, we should be set, and have all our info together to make an educated decision. If we have the surgery done here, it'll be in March sometime.