The Good and the Bad

Big things have happened for Santiago this last month - some good, some not so good.  He was sick with different things for about a 3 week period.  He had impetigo first, then a nasty viral infection that came with high fevers, and he still is very congested.  With all that bad stuff going on he had to take a break from wearing his helmet.  He had it on for almost 5 straight weeks before he came down with impetigo and Dr. T told us to leave it off until his head cleared up.  I knew deep down inside that this long break from helmet wear was not necessarily a good thing as far as Santiago's recovery goes post-surgery but we sure enjoyed having a regular little boy around the house and not being hit by accidental helmet head bumps.  That thing can really hurt!  So here comes the good stuff...the really good stuff!  I took Santiago to his helmet adjustment appointment on Monday after work to tell them how long we had not been wearing the helmet and waiting for bad news about having it off for 3 solid weeks.  Erin took a scan of Santiago's head using the Star Scanner and instead of sharing bad news with me she did quite the opposite.  She showed me the results and told me that the goal was to get all the different types of measurements to 90%.  I'm not real sure what all the data means but all our numbers were above 90 - the lowest was a 92 and the highest was 98.  There was also one more main area where the two diagonal readings need to have a difference of 2 mm and Santiago's difference was 1.2 mm.  So basically he passed the helmet test with flying colors and as far as remolding goes we could not get more symmetrical with his measurements.  This was music to my ears!! She said the magic words to me "I would like to discontinue the helmet."  Whew!  I asked Erin to go ahead and make some adjustments on Santi's helmet just in case Dr. T wanted us to keep it on for protection purposes still so she made the adjustments and sent us on our way.  I called Dr. T's office on the way home and left a message about our news and also wrote the nurse an email when I got home explaining everything.  On Tuesday, De emailed me back and said Dr. T said we can take the helmet off!! YIPPEE!! We are so excited.  We now have a healthy boy with a beautiful round head : )  I hope this is the end of our cranio journey with Santiago.   We will have to continue check ups with Dr. T until Santi is 7 years old so the journey is not completely over but I think I can finally say the toughest part of this journey is over.