We had alot to think about since our last meeting at the Queens Medical Centre, but knew that Harriet would be in for the life saving operation on her spine within a very short space of time .
Letters started to arrive from the relevant consultants involved with Harriet`s care during the operation and after a few days it really started to dawn on us the severity and importance of this operation .
Harriet initially had to be hooked up to a sleep monitor system to track Harriet`s normal breathing patterns, during sleep and when she was awake, the test lasted 24 hours and then we took the monitoring box back to the QMC for analysis . The following day we had a phone call from Professor Vyas, who is Harriet`s Respiratory physician, he told us that he had looked at the data collected from the machine and that Harriet`s breathing was acceptable for the operation .
Within a few days after Harriet`s breathing tests were confirmed acceptable for the operation, we received two further letters from the QMC, that came days within each other. The first letter asked us to bring Harriet for an anaesthetic assessment with Dr.Wake at the Queens medical Centre on 26th August .
The second letter really hit home, it was for a pre-operative assessment with Harriet`s surgeon Mr.Grevitt on September the 7th, the letter went on to say that Harriet would be admitted to the ward on September 27th and they would operate on Harriet the following day .
We are now both very anxious about Harriet`s operation and have been in two minds as to whether she should have it, but now realise that there is only a short window open to allow surgeons to operate before the winter months set in and the wards start to fill up with patients with winter viruses .
This September will a very testing time for us as a family and only time will tell whether we made the right decision to go forward with the Scoliosis back operation and try to save Harriet`s life .
Dad
