We are home from the surgery after six days in the hospital!  All went well, and it's a good thing that the surgery was postponed to add the spinal cord detethering part, as the neurosurgeon found him tightly tethered, much worse that it looked on the MRI.  Attempting to do the spinal fusion without addressing this could have caused some serious spinal cord issues.  The doctor ended up having to fuse up higher than he had anticipated (sacrum to T11) since vertebra which had looked normal on the xrays turned out to be abnormal when he went in to do the surgery and he had to go up to the normal bone area in order to achieve a good result.  Leaving the abnormal vertabra above the fused site could have caused a false joint which could potentially cause spinal cord compression.  The surgeries went well and the only issues we are having now is some phantom itching on Billy's right leg and some knee and foot pain as his nerves "wake up" from being handled/moved in position.  Hopefully this will resolve over the next couple weeks.  Billy will start home physical therapy in a couple days to try and get him up and walking well (he is walking slowly with a walker now when he needs to get to the bathroom and such) and improve his posture (he's pretty hunched over still now - but can you blame him after what he's been through!).

All in all, he's very happy to be home and to be playing (fighting?) with his big brother Nick again!  I've put a picture of the fusion xray in the spine page, and a couple hospital pics in the summer pics page.