Surgery #20

Well, after a couple of weeks' wait, we made our way to Toronto on the 3rd of May so Kennedy could undergo surgery May 4th early in the morning. We arrived around noon on the third and our good friend Amrit picked us up. We spent the afternoon at his house - talking & visiting while Kennedy played with his son, Aman. It was a really nice time. In the evening, our other good friends Phil & Margaret drove into the city to visit with us at the hotel. After a long day of travel and visiting with friends, we hit the hay early as we had to be at the hospital at 6am.

Around 8am, they took Kennedy into the O.R. - I accompanied her inside until she was 'out'. About 2 hours later, the doctor came out to tell us that things were done. It didn't go optimally because he was hoping to be able to fix the original abutment that got kicked in the schoolyard. Unfortunately, when he tried to straighten it out, the whole thing fell right out of her skull. He warned us that the gap that was left looked like, "the grand canyon". He said it was extremely rare for him to see something get hit that hard to be knocked out of someone's skull after having been there for three years. This was upsetting to us to imagine the trauma that her head took from that kick to dislodge it so completely. So, he ended up having to bring the spare screw up that was implanted in 2005, put a new abutment on it, make a skin graft to cover the big hole and insert a new back-up screw. It was quite a bit more involved than we'd hoped. The good thing is that Kennedy bounced back in her usual super-girl fashion.

She has a large foam pad and a healing cap on until Wednesday of this week but overall, she is in good spirits and able to hear somewhat with her softband hearing aid on until we can use the new abutment.












We actually took her the next day to the Ontario Science Center as we had the whole day before flying out at 8:20pm and she was feeling well enough. She had a great time. I have posted all the pictures on Facebook, but for those of you who don't have it, here are the public links to our Toronto albums:

Toronto Album 1
Toronto Album 2

Thank you to EVERYONE who kept us in their thoughts. It certainly was not the best outcome and it's upsetting it had to happen at all but at least she's doing okay and hopefully there will be no further complications from the added work that needed to be done to her head.