Pit Stop at the Dublin Sports Med Office

June 3, 2013
We met with Dr. Beebe, our surgeon, and his team. It was a very encouraging pre-op conference. Here are some of the points that we found out:
The surgery will take 6 to 8 hours, with the first hour being for anesthesia.
There will be two surgeons working on Allie--Dr. Allan Beebe (top picture) will be the primary surgeon and Dr. Jan Klamar (bottom picture) will be the secondary.
Allie will be in the hospital 3 to 5 days dependent on when her belly "wakes up".
At this point we do not know what type of metal will be used--it will be either titanium (a stronger metal) or stainless steel. She will not set off metal detectors but should she fly she will need to be hand scanned at security.
There will not be a need for blood donors. They will use a system called "cell saver" that recirculates her blood.
She will have electrodes attached to her head and will be monitored from head to toe throughout the procedure. This system will let the surgical team know if any adjustments need to be made whether it be moving a rod, loosening a screw or even adjusting the temperature in the operating room.
We did not ask about what kind of music will be played in the operating room but I am going to suggest Lawrence Welk. July 2 is the anniversary of when the Lawrence Welk show debuted on TV and Allie loves watching the reruns with us (not).

A full set of x-rays was taken at this visit. This is the standard scoliosis view. Her thoracolumbar curve has increased in the past 3 1/2 months. It was between 45 and 50 degrees. It is now closer to 60 degrees. With the continuation of the increase in the curve, there is no question that she needs to have the surgery.

The other x-rays done included bending and stretching. This is done so that Dr. Beebe knows how flexible Allie's back is and can plan out which vertebrae will be fused and where the hardware will be placed.

For the stretching x-ray, Allie laid on a table and one tech held her head and the other her feet and they stretched her out. This is the results and this is what Dr. Beebe will try to come close to in the corrections. However, it is estimated that the curves will be corrected only up to 50%. We are looking at her thoracolumbar curve being corrected down to maybe 30 degrees (provided it doesn't increase any more over the next 4 weeks).

Our next stop will be either at the hospital for pre-op testing (has not been scheduled yet) or the Outer Banks (we leave on June 15 for a week at the beach!).