Surgery Update

Thank you so much to each and every one of you for your prayers, emails, text messages, and voice mails. Your love and support is what has gotten us this far. You have given us more than you could ever know. I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to get this update out to you all, things have been a bit hectic. We arrived in Pittsburgh on Wednesday afternoon and Wes went in to surgery Thursday morning at about 10:30. The plan for the surgery was for them to make sure the prior surgery had not overlooked anything and if not, to go ahead and do a partial rhizotomy. A partial rhizotomy basically means to partially cut the nerve. At about 2:30 that afternoon Dr. Janetta came out to speak with us and let us know that everything had gone well. He informed us that they had gone ahead with the rhizotomy and had also put in more Teflon where they had last time. Wes stayed in recovery until about 7:30 that evening when they were finally able to get him into a room. Thankfully Wes was doing much better than he did last time. As you may remember, last time he had a very difficult time due to fluid build up in his brain. As we had been praying, this did not happen this time. When Wez was able to talk to us we learned that he had not lost any function on the left side of his face which was another prayer answered. He has lost sensation on most of the left side. He says it is numb and the left side of his lips and tongue it’s tingly. He said the best comparison he can think of is like going to the dentist and being numbed up. Thankfully he has no face pain though and that was the trade off that we were hoping for. There was a little concern on Friday because he started running a fever but by Saturday he was doing much better and they decided to discharge him from the hospital that afternoon. It is still unbelievable to me that they can do brain surgery and then send you on your own 2 or 3 days later!

Saturday afternoon ended up being quite difficult because when we arrived at our apartment we quickly realized there was no air conditioning! Wez soon began to run a fever again and broke out in a rash all over. The building we are staying in apparently had to turn off the a.c. for the whole weekend and failed to notify us. We franticly began looking for a hotel to stay at for the next day or 2 in order to get him in cool conditions but due to a convention in town everything was booked. Luckily we were able to find a place with one room left. It wasn’t the cleanest but it was air-conditioned. It’s very difficult to move Wez but thankfully once we got there he started to feel much better after a few hours his fever went back down. Today the weather has gotten much cooler so we were able to move once again back to our original accommodations. The move wasn’t easy but hopefully we will be staying put now! Overall Wez is doing very well. He has pain associated with the operation as well as nausea and headaches but they are not nearly as severe as last time. Wez’s mom will be leaving tomorrow morning to go back to Nashville and on Tuesday Wez and I will be going back to the hospital to meet with his surgeon. I will let you know how the visit goes and when we are able to travel home. Last time we left a week after the surgery to come home and it was a difficult trip so depending on how he feels we may stay a bit longer. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. I can’t even begin to express my gratitude to all of you. Everyone has been so generous in so many ways. We feel so incredibly blessed and loved.

Always,
Rachel Bez