Halos Are What Angels Wear

Levi and I went to see Justice's orthopedic surgeon today for what we thought was going to be all about the details of her upcoming spinal rod surgery. We already knew it was scheduled for Halloween but for a surgery this big, it takes a few appointments to run tests, take x-rays, MRI's and what nots...
For this appointment we were told we didn't have to bring Justice so she spent the day with her beloved respite provider.

Well, details of the surgery was not what was given to us. After taking Justice's x-rays to a spine conference and gathering opinions from multiple doctors in his field, our doctor decided that Justice may be a good candidate for using traction before her actual spinal rod surgery.

What this means is they will attach a halo on her head. Then she will be in traction with weights pulling up on her halo. She would have to be like this for 4-6 weeks. She will be required to be in a specially made wheelchair or a hospital bed the entire time. Then after the 4-6 weeks she will have the spinal rods put in.

They can't tell us for sure that the traction will or will not help her in any way but are confident it will make her spine more flexible and therefore get a better correction when they put the rods in. She is going to need her spine fused and the correction they get at the time of surgery is it. They will never be able to straighten her spine any further so improving her curve by an extra 10-20 %may be worth the 4-6 weeks.

This is such a big decision for us to make. They could do the halo surgery on Halloween or later that week or she could just go ahead and have her rods put in. If she gets the halo, spinal rods would probably go in sometime in Dec.

We decided to ask Justice what she preferred and she said "Halos are what angels wear." She could not be anymore right. She is an angel and has more grace, strength and courage than the rest of our family put together. She said she wants to have the halo and try the traction because she wants her back to be as straight as possible.

We still will need her neurosurgeon to okay the halo and traction. He is not in his office this week so hopefully next week he will be back and help us make a safe decision.

Please continue to pray for our family and the doctors involved. This is not an easy case for them and I'm sure they want to give us the best advice and do what is best for Justice.