Post-Surgery

Tim:

Michael is out of surgery now.  Dr. O'Neill said he was very pleased with how everything went.  The two pieces of tumor on his cerebellum were removed without a hitch.  One piece of tumor on his brain stem was pretty stuck on there, and they worked very carefully to remove it.  Fortunately his blood pressure and other vitals remained stable this time around and they believe they were successful in removing it.  The other piece of tumor they had seen on the brain stem in the MRI turned out not to be tumor after all, so they didn't have to do anything with it.

So overall things went very well as far as we can tell.  Michael is currently awake and pretty miserable right now, so Liz is rocking him and the nurses are giving him pain medication.  It's still too early to tell if he has further damage to his 6th and 7th cranial nerves (the facial and eye nerves) from the surgery, hopefully we'll have a better feel for that in the morning.  He will also have another MRI tomorrow to see if it looks like any tumor is remaining.

It's been an exhausting day.  We're grateful for all of the prayers on Michael's behalf and that the surgery appears to have gone well.  We'll get a better feel for things tomorrow and do another update.