Hi all,
I did not intend to give the impression with my first post that we were dissatisfied with Dr. Hey. On the contrary, we found him amazingly accessible and flexible.
Background: two years ago my husband took Ezra to a pediatric orthopedist at UNC because we were worried about his posture. The doc said: "just a teenage slump." Well, this "teenage slump" got worse suddenly in the last year. When I took him back, to the SAME orthopedist, this time he said: "kyphosis, 79% - nothing to be done but surgery, too bad nothing was done while he was still growing."
!!!!!!!
The treatment this earlier surgeon described was two operations, of 6-7 hours each, several days apart, one for the inside and one for the outside of the spine. And he warned us that often the correction is not as good as one would hope for.
We left his office plunged in despair.
Months later we got a second opinion from Dr. Lloyd Hey. He saw us almost immediately after my call - went out of his way to see us on a weekend - and after looking at the xrays said he could achieve the desired correction with one operation of 4 hours.
So we started thinking about that. Ezra's father was very unsure, especially after what the first orthopedist had said. He talked to many doctors showing them the xrays. We also called or wrote many of the references Dr. Hey gave us and the patients all said they were happy with the results and would do it again.
So we decided to go ahead. Ezra had a lot of things planned for the summer so timing the operation was difficult. Dr Hey was willing to work with us, to the extent of making time on a day which was not convenient for him - and a Friday afternoon, at that! - and he got his surgical team to come in and do it with him! - and he stopped by on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon to see Ezra, even though it was a big weekend for his own family.
As I mentioned before, the surgery went smoothly and in fact took only three hours.
I would also mention that Dr. Hey is the ONLY doctor I know who both answers his own phone and answers his emails.
He was kind and encouraging.
Lastly - by and large, we found the nurses at his hospital to be lovely people. It was just our misfortune that we got the only bad one on Ezra's first, most difficult morning. The rest of the time they went out of their way to help us.
I did not intend to give the impression with my first post that we were dissatisfied with Dr. Hey. On the contrary, we found him amazingly accessible and flexible.
Background: two years ago my husband took Ezra to a pediatric orthopedist at UNC because we were worried about his posture. The doc said: "just a teenage slump." Well, this "teenage slump" got worse suddenly in the last year. When I took him back, to the SAME orthopedist, this time he said: "kyphosis, 79% - nothing to be done but surgery, too bad nothing was done while he was still growing."
!!!!!!!
The treatment this earlier surgeon described was two operations, of 6-7 hours each, several days apart, one for the inside and one for the outside of the spine. And he warned us that often the correction is not as good as one would hope for.
We left his office plunged in despair.
Months later we got a second opinion from Dr. Lloyd Hey. He saw us almost immediately after my call - went out of his way to see us on a weekend - and after looking at the xrays said he could achieve the desired correction with one operation of 4 hours.
So we started thinking about that. Ezra's father was very unsure, especially after what the first orthopedist had said. He talked to many doctors showing them the xrays. We also called or wrote many of the references Dr. Hey gave us and the patients all said they were happy with the results and would do it again.
So we decided to go ahead. Ezra had a lot of things planned for the summer so timing the operation was difficult. Dr Hey was willing to work with us, to the extent of making time on a day which was not convenient for him - and a Friday afternoon, at that! - and he got his surgical team to come in and do it with him! - and he stopped by on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon to see Ezra, even though it was a big weekend for his own family.
As I mentioned before, the surgery went smoothly and in fact took only three hours.
I would also mention that Dr. Hey is the ONLY doctor I know who both answers his own phone and answers his emails.
He was kind and encouraging.
Lastly - by and large, we found the nurses at his hospital to be lovely people. It was just our misfortune that we got the only bad one on Ezra's first, most difficult morning. The rest of the time they went out of their way to help us.
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