36 hours post-op and he's been discharged! What an amazing kid! We are so grateful for our neurosurgeon, Dr. Daniels, and everyone at the Mayo Clinic. Definitely the best!

Ethan is an overachiever in everything he does, so why would surgery be any different? He is expected to be in the hospital for 3 - 5 nights, but here we are at the beginning of the 2nd night and he's already met his discharge requirements (eating, drinking, peeing, and walking). I'm sure they'll keep him at least another night, but it's definitely not looking like a 5 day stay and he is thrilled about that! He moved from ICU to the peds floor today, but since he was doing

Surgery was successful today. Our surgeon said that everything went well, and Ethan is snoozing away in ICU this evening. His surgery lasted from 1:30 - 5pm, and it's now 8:00 and he's still sleeping, so my guess is that the pain meds are kicking in and keeping him out of pain. For those who don't know the back story, here is the abridged version. Ethan was diagnosed as failure to thrive at 11 months, and then the past 4 years I have noticed him fatiguing easily, having re

I'm hoping this page can serve as a way to update our friends and family while Ethan goes through, and recovers, from his Chiari 1 Malformation Decompression surgery on 4/21/16. The short story is this: Ethan's brain is just too big for his head! Almost literally. His skull didn't form quite right, and as a result, his brain has grown past the limits of where it should be and it now extends down into his spinal cord, and is being pinched from 2 directions. If that sounds