Sixth Surgery Complete
God once again shows His mercy and Grace by bringing Ryan through another surgery on his hand. This time, Dr. Seitz removed the lengtheners and pins and preformed a syndactyly surgery. The syndactyly release’s purpose was to remove scar tissue between the pinky and ring finger that was just stretched over 20mm and and lower the skin connection. Even though one set of pins came out of the bone on the middle finger during the distraction augmentation, we found that God created some solid bone in the finger anyway! It is not as long as the other, but we did gain somewhere between 5-8mm. Below are some pictures for you to see the progress!
Infection in Pin Site
Day 1 of the Infection:
2/28/2010
With lengthening completed for a week now, Ryan developed an infection in the finger that didn’t lengthen as well as the other, his middle finger. During the lengthening, about day 15, this finger showed signs of reaching the end of length with the ski not stretching like the other. The skin around the pins near the end of the finger became tight and thin. We stopped lengthening. However a week or so later, that tight skin started to die off. Since then, God’s amazing creation of human skin has been re-contouring itself around the area. Distal to all this, infection set in on the pins up on the hand. The Lord is using Antibiotics and Ryan’s immune system to overcome this infection, but it is not an easy road. The problem now is that the whole pin set up is not very stable as the end pins are be pushed out of the finger. We only hope there is still a little bone attached…
Day 5 of the Infection:
3/4/2010
Day 6: Lengthening Ryan’s Two Middle Fingers
We praise the Lord, God that He created such marvels like the human body. Who could have thought of making bone where it heals itself and grows new bone as we apply pressure and pull it apart? No one but the living, awesome God Himself.
At the End of day 6, we have seen 6mm of length gained and everything is looking great! Ryan looks forward to turning the screw four times a day and watching his fingers grow. Every other turn, we clean the pin sites as we do our best to keep the incision and pins clean and dry to prevent any infection. This time around it almost seems like old hat as his first round of treatment (over two years ago) we had to take care of four sets of lengtheners  and this time, only two. We look forward to seeing more growth each day!
God brought Ryan through 5th surgery!
Ryan did great with this second round of surgery. Dr. Seitz placed two lengtheners on his middle two fingers and placed a bandage for healing. That will stay on for one week and then the stretching will start.
Coming out of anesthesia is always the hardest part for Ryan. He struggled for a while, but with some pain meds, he fell asleep and then has been his normal self ever since. Coloring, watching movies, and eating lots! He had to go without breakfast and lunch today, so for dinner he ate 3+ big pieces of pizza, his favorite!
Read More
Fifth Surgery for Ryan Scheduled
We are all excited as Ryan gets to continue his hand reconstruction with his fifth surgery scheduled as he starts the second round of treatment. Dr. Seitz of the Cleveland Clinic in Beachwood, Ohio will continue to be his surgeon. 
We ask for prayer for Dr. Seitz, his team, skilled hands and work, and for Ryan’s safety during the surgery and that he will not have any complications from the anesthesia or surgery itself. He is always allergic to adhesives, so pray also that God will calm his immune system in response to these types of things and move his body’s defenses over to fight off bacteria from the incisions.
For those of you not familiar with his condition of the procedure, feel free to read the whole story here, but for a quick synopsis read on. Ryan was born without fingers on his left hand from Amniotic Band Syndrome. He had a few stumps, but without much function at all. After much prayer and searching we found Dr. Setiz in Cleveland Ohio, who is one of the few people in the world who performs distraction augmentation on the hand. Basically, he implants bone if necessary (toe bones) breaks them, attaches a device screwed into the bone and extends outside the hand to slowly move the two broken pieces apart. Then God’s miracle of bone regeneration takes over and fills in the space. Sometimes it is necessary to cut the skin that “webs” between the stretched fingers and fill in with skin graphs taken from the groin area. Sometimes this is not necessary.
Ryan is ready for stage #5. Last time he had four fingers stretched, this time only the shorter, middle two fingers. These are the fingers that are entirely toe bones. The longer thumb and pinky finger he had did have a small amount of bone to start with, so they are a combination original finger and toe bones and do not need further lengthening as they are growing well. The other good news is all the transplanted and original bone still have active growth plates with means they will all continue to grow naturally as well.
Some pictures of his pre-op condition are shown below with daddy’s hand in comparison just like those original pictures before the 1st surgery.
