Camille's surgeries (July, 2003)

Camille was operated on in April and June, 2003, two serious but vital operations. She must have another operation in August to remove the external pins.

Here is a picture of Camille with the pins in place

Thanks to your gifts, the two first surgical procedures were able to be done under normal conditions, with her mother being with her.
The operation itself went quite well, but the breaks done during the operation have unexpectedly calcified, which has resulted in an insufficient movement of the facial bones of her upper jaw. We are waiting for the surgeons to decide exactly what treatment is going to be used to fix that problem, which keeps her sinuses from working normally and makes eating difficult because of the lack of alignment between her jaws.
The money which we received previously has now been entirely spent on medical expenses, mileage expenses from and to the hospital and her mother's accomodation expenses in a "parents' house" near the hospital in Lille.

The X-Ray of Camille's Skull

We can see the two external pins (the parallel threaded bars) and their anchoring points in the skull bones.

These threaded bars had to be turned twice a day, 2mm each time, for a period of four weeks after the operation. This was very painful for Camille and provoked a "trigeminal neuralgia", which is a disorder of the fifth cranial (trigeminal) nerve which causes episodic intense, stabbing, electric shock-like pain in the areas of the face where the branches of the nerve are distributed - lips, eyes, nose, scalp, forehead, upper jaw, and lower jaw.

The Chiari syndrome operation can be visualized here as well: the last vertebra is cut near to its junction with the skull bones.

Camille in hospital after her first operation