We started off the week of August 25 at WakeMed Hospital helping little 11 yo Kaitlyn, who has spinal muscle atrophy (SMA), and a nearly 90 degree progressive scoliosis treated elsewhere with VEPTR. We got her straightened up with some unique engineering using special sublaminar fixation, since her osteoporosis / bone strength was very weak. She can now sit up straight in her wheelchair, and this is also helping her with her breathing already. Her mom is just awesome, and is basically a “super nurse” for Kaitlyn, who was able to take Kaitlyn home on postop day 3 back to Fayetteville!
Tuesday I did scoliosis surgery for a 19 yo young lady who had syrinx surgery at age 9, and developed a postlaminectomy kyphosis and scoliosis which was very painful. Her surgery went very well, and she headed home with a great new posture, probably a couple inches taller.
Wednesday and Thursday were two back to back huge scoliosis surgeries — the first one was for a woman in her 70’s from Franklin, NC — about 6+ hours away. Jerry met one of my scoliosis postop patients from Franklin over this past year named Pam, who has actually helped Jerry through the preop process and continues to pray and care for her now with Pam’s husband, Fred. Jerry was really suffering badly with her deformity, shifted about a foot to the side, and about 2 fee forward. She is now doing well, off to rehab here locally before we get her back home to Franklin in a couple weeks.
Thursday was a similar surgery for a nice lady in her 50’s, who was also quite “pretzel-like” , having suffered for 10+ years with progressive deformity. Both of these adult patients from Wed and Thu had adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, but then developed progression and severe pain and quality of life issues later in life. This emphasizes the importance of life-long follow-up for scoliosis and kyphosis and to not assume that everything is OK at the end of growing. She went home 4 days after surgery doing very well
Friday clinic before Labor Day was quite busy, seeing several of our teen and young adult postop patients back for follow-up. Things really got interesting when the power went out in our section of North Raleigh — shutting off all our lights, computers, and X-Ray machine! The large group of patients we had in the waiting room and clinic rooms actually took it all in stride, and ended up creating a party atmosphere with a bunch of my long-term patients then turning to their neighbor and striking up a new conversation — creating actually a festive family atmosphere. Luckily Hey Clinic has large windows on 2 sides of the building, so the waiting room was well-lit, overlooking the park next door, and we actually used several of our offices as exam rooms. We really appreciated everyone’s patience during the power outage. One interesting coincidence: exactly 6 months earlier, we had to evacuate the building for a couple hours, also on a clinic day due to some smoke in an air handler. One of our scoliosis guests and her mom, up from Wilmington, NC was there that day for her 6 month postop visit! As shown in the link, we ended up seeing her and several other patients that day out in the beautiful gardens that are adjacent to our clinic building, on a beautiful sunny day.
Labor Day weekend was a nice break, getting a chance to catch up with family and visit the North Carolina coast for a couple days with the dogs. We came back to work this Tuesday and did scoliosis surgery Tues, Wed and Thu…. more on that later! Have a great weekend.
Dr. Lloyd Hey
Hey Clinic for Scoliosis and Spine Surgery
https://www.heyclinic.com
