Tomorrow is the big day! We will arrive at 7am and once Gabrielle is sedated she will have a PICC line placed, the stereotactic MRI completed, and then head into the OR. The surgery tomorrow entails suturing grids onto the brain and placing depth probes. Dr. Weiner said the surgery may take anywhere from 3-8 hours but his average surgery takes about 4 hours. He said sometimes repeat brain surgery can be much more tedious due to scar tissue,etc. and the risk of problems can be a little higher. We are praying there are no problems with bleeding, stroke, or neurological damage and that Gabrielle would tolerate the surgery extremely well.

Following surgery she will be taken directly to the PICU and remain there for approximately 7 days of intracranial monitoring. It sounds like the hardest part of this for most children is being confined to the bed or chair for so many days. Based on the results of this monitoring Dr. Weiner stated we may have difficult decisions to make regarding how much brain to remove. We are obviously praying things will be very straightforward and that the seizures are being produced in a very localized area.

We will continue to update as we can.
Thanks so much for continuing to follow Gabby’s story.
Love,
Kelly