Surgery Details

Sorry that it has taken me so long to finally write down the details on why the surgery took 7 1/2 hours instead of the original 3 hours. First off here is a diagram of the layers of the head so that when I talk about areas you know what I am talking about. Just a little easier to understand.

As I said before, Damon had surgery on his skull base where he had a Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) leak. The leak was from head trauma that he sustained 7 years ago when he was involved in a car accident with a drunk driver. At the time, Damon had received 9 metal plates in his head to repair the fractures and all the other damage that he had at the time. We now know that the 9 plates didn't cover all the fractures that he had. There are still a few that aren't repaired but they are not causing any problems at this time so we left them alone. The area of concern was right above Damon's left eye, right by his eye brow. Now looking at the diagram, Damon had a fracture there on the left side that was 3 cm. Who knew that 3 cm could be such a pain. Well the break was in the skull and what Dr. Fakhri normally does is go up through the fracture and put tissue in the area of the Dura Mater between the Skull and the Arachnoid. And this normally repairs the leak. Easy enough right? Well, too bad Damon didn't have the space where the Dura Mater is to fill with the tissue. Damon's Membrane had actually bowed down to the skull and fused together over the last 7 years. Thus not allowing there to be any space between the two. So instead of repairing within, Dr. Fakhri had to make the repair on the outside of the skull. So he got a bone from inside Damon's sinus cavity and then cover it with the tissue and pack it with removable surgical packs. Dr. Fakhri said that he consulted with a Neuro surgeon before moving on with the surgery because most other Physicians in Dr. Fakhri's position would have closed Damon up and performed a crainiotomy with a Neuro Surgeon. But they all decided that the repair would be best performed the way that they talked about. So thankfully, they didn't have to perform a crainiotomy. Now keep in mind that they performed this whole surgery up through his left nostril and a small 3 cm incision in his left eye brow. Now before the whole procedure, the Neuro Surgeon inserted a drain into Damon's spine called a Lumbar Drain. In this drain he injected a colored (lime green) dye that would get into Damon's Cerebrospinal Fluid that would flow to the spot or spots that were leaking and this allow Dr. Fakhri to be sure he was repairing all of the leaks. Like I had said before there were 3 possible leaks but only one of those were leaking and as you can tell, it was the worst one. After the surgery Damon was in recovery for another 4 hours. Talk about making me nervous. Dr. Fahkri had already come out and talked to us telling us everything about the surgery and how Damon did really well and that he was now in recovery. That was at 3:15 pm and the surgery started at 7:30 am. Recovery was suppose to last 1-2 hours. Well when it got close to time I received a phone call from the recovery room from Damon's nurse. She said that Damon woke up and noticed what time it was and was really worried about me. My sweet husband knows how things like this worry me since his first ordeal 7 years ago. And he was right, I was on pins and needles the whole day! I wouldn't eat or drink till I saw him. The nurse pulled some strings and Damon was allowed to talk to me. Talk about crying my eyes out! It was then about 5:00 pm and I had not talked or seen him since about 7:15 am. He told me in his groggy just out of surgery voice how much he loved me and that he was fine. Well, then after hanging up I got another call about 20 minutes later saying that Damon wasn't meeting the criteria to be discharged from recovery. WHAT? I just talked to him and he sounded fine. That sent me into total panic, even more then I was in. I just exaused myself from where friends were sitting and went in the hall and lost it. I called my friend Char and thankfully she listened to me loose it and was a great voice of reason. So he remained in recovery for another 2 hours. What had happened is that Damon asked for some Sprite and I guess his tummy wasn't ready to handle the bubbles or just anything and he threw it up with a lot of blood. Yeah, I guess that makes a lot of sense on needing to keep him longer. About 7:15 pm we were told what room Damon was in. Talk about all of us (Damon's Dad- Jack, his cousin- Marcus, a childhood friend- Brian and myself) running up to the room. We all rushed in to find NO DAMON!!! So we all waited around for another 15 minutes and here comes Damon! My heart was filled with so many emotions! I don't think he made it 2 feet inside the room before I ran up to his bed and grabbed his hand. He was awake and a little bit alert and gave me a big squeeze. Finally, he was back with us!! I was so grateful to have Damon's dad with me the whole day or there is NO way that I would have made it. Neither one of us left the surgery waiting room that whole day and neither one of us ate or drank. Our tummies were in knots all day. Another one of Damon's childhood friends, Jay Odom also came up to the hospital around 2 pm expecting to see Damon since his surgery was only suppose to last about 3-4 hours but no Damon. He was so nice and brought up some Pappasitos. Finally after we all got our appetites later on that night we were able to eat. Our old Bishop, Roger Pruitt from our church in Houston also came up during that time and visited with us while Damon was in surgery. Thank you all so much for all of your prayers. I know that our Heavenly Father was with us and with the hospital staff during that whole time. Thank you, thank you!