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Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

As stated in the previous post, Bryan's surgery went well. We left him in the OR at 8:00 am, as scheduled, but the surgery didn't actually get underway until around 9:15 am. Every hour or so, an RN would come out and update us on the progress. After we had been waiting for a while, she came and told us that surgery had started a little later than expected. Then about an hour and a half later, she came and said "the surgeons are almost at the aneurysm". Then quite a while after that she came and said "they're just closing him up now". We didn't have these updates last time so we really appreciated knowing what was going on.

So the surgery took about five hours - the same length as the first one. The surgeons came and spoke to us afterward and explained that it went really well. They said they could see one part of the aneurysm was really thin and that it was good that the surgery was done because, if left, it probably would have burst in the next year or so. Yikes! They said the next 24 hours are critical but that Bryan is doing really well. The risk of vasospasm is there but much less than last time. If the brain happens to swell too much and causes the clip to move a little bit, it could result in vasospasm but the surgeon said it was quite unlikely. After surgery, Bryan was in recovery for a few hours and then transferred to an ICU step down unit.

Once he was settled, we were able to visit with him. He's very tired and understandably quite groggy. He was quite nauseous after coming out surgery but they gave him IV Gravol and that seems to be helping. His jaw is extremely sore - the surgeons needed to cut through his masseter muscles (the muscles used for chewing) during surgery and so that's a major area of pain for him. He is still tender on the other side from the first surgery and hasn't been able to open his mouth fully. So now the soreness is on both sides and will be a major challenge for Bryan.

Tomorrow Bryan will have a CT scan to see how things look.

We’re so thankful for how everything went today. It’s a relief for everyone to have this surgery done and out of the way. It was hard to leave Bryan at the hospital tonight but it’s somehow comforting to know that he’s in a familiar place – a place that has almost become a second home over the last many weeks (as sad as that sounds!) He knows a lot of the nurses and is familiar with how things go there.

Thank you for your continued support. Bryan is aware of just how many people are praying for him and feels encouraged that. What a blessing!

Reasons for praise:

• A good night’s sleep for Bryan last night
• Relatively calm nerves (most of the time) this morning pre-surgery
• Successful surgery
• Amazing medical staff – the surgeons that performed the surgery were a husband and wife team and were so caring and explained things so well to us

Prayer requests:

• A good, deep, restful, long sleep for Bryan tonight
• That Bryan’s nausea would be kept under control
• For physical healing for Bryan
• That God would continue to be glorified through this journey

Here's a picture from before the surgery this morning. Aren't they cute?