Hi all, My name is Donna Weightman and I am a proud mumma to my Scoliosis warrior. This upcoming surgery will her 5th, She is an amazing human to be put through what she has and has managed to deal with at 13. Halo traction, Femoral & skull. over time equating up to 18 KG of water attached to her halo, this was carried out over a 3 week period. Then surgery for scoliosis is a spinal fusion with metal rods and screws and a bone graft. The basic idea is to realign (straighten) and fuse (weld) together the curved vertebrae so that they heal into a single, solid bone. Other. Following all of this we were told that the lower spine needed to have a portion removed and lengthened. Over the past couple of years she has suffered excruciating pain in her middle back. We found an amazing surgeon in Adelaide ( Yes, we live in Melbourne, but we could not locate a surgeon that would carry out this process. We took the flights to see him and he is willing to help.... Brief summary here...

Hello one & all, I’ve decided to do this in a format for everyone to read as I appreciate that so many beautiful souls are very invested in Maya’s outcome.

So, this week we headed to Adelaide to see an amazing surgeon, Mike Selby. Yes… Why Adelaide, well we have not been able to locate anyone in Melbourne to take on the major responsibilities of what we thought were an extremely complex operation that we thought Maya would need.

Maya was booked in for a procedure called a CT Myelogram This Wednesday just gone , this involved injecting a radioactive dye through her spinal canal, then tipping her up, down sideways etc ( her description was the equivalent of a human juice box) to get the dye to run all the way through her body to effectively CT her to find exactly where the problematic areas were that have been causing her so much pain.

The main side effect of this was that the dye stays in the body for at least a week. Which can cause Migraine symptoms, and boy it did just that. Nausea, vomiting and just unwell and then a plane trip home to Melbourne Equation = horrible. And still is ☹

We were then booked in the following morning to see Dr. Mike Selby, an amazing man…

He asked her to identify the pain she was experiencing, as she described it all, he straight away said that everything that she had said were indicative of what he had seen in the report. YAY, You know what I mean in yay! Finally, validation for this poor kiddo.

He then dissected every image to show us what the findings were.T8, the transverse screw had impinged on the spinal cord, thus the extreme pain radiating from her back to her tummy. ( Which is where all of the nerves connect ) That screw needs to be removed ASAP. T12 also causing grief, not necessarily removed but possibly a shorter screw put in.

Her most recent fusion in October last year where it was partially removed then lengthened, another screw loosening but because she hasn’t really had enough time for the bone to graft he would like to leave that one for now.

Risks…too many to list. They will have to deflate her left lung to get this under way. Paralysis, permanent nerve damage. Might have to engage in putting in a so called stent (For breathing) to have available should it be required. Does he do all of the surgeries at once? Or do it one at a time? Mike has to confer with one of his colleagues who is a neurosurgeon to see what the answer is to that one.

To say we were shell shocked would be an understatement.

There is lot’s more to the story but I hope that this explains some…

Kicker, Surgery is booked for August 19th…Yep So quick !!!

Now, I know that anyone who knows me & knows me well would know that I would never ask for help from anyone. But, I feel this time I feel that we are really going to need it. We are a one income family but have tried so hard to give our daughter some quality of life, I can only hope that you can help . Thanyou so much from the bottom of my heart.