when I was pregnant with Matthew
everything was fine, healthy, great
pregnancy, nothing was wrong he was born
two weeks early because I had a
c-section and when he was born you know
he he looked fine and then when he went
to his doctor's appointments his doctor
said hey well let's send you somewhere
his head looks a little funny so when he
was three months old that's when we met
Cardinal Glennon and and that's where
we met Dr. Lin and their staff
When Matthew was a baby he was born with
craniosynostosis which is a fairly
common condition where the skull bones
are fused and requires a plastic surgeon
to do craniofacial surgery to
reconstruct the bones so that there's
space for the brain to develop and the
eyes the develop normally and the
problem with that condition is that
there's restrictive skull growth so
sometimes that can result in increased
pressure of the brain during development
which can potentially result in
developmental delays trouble with
learning and speech and things like that
the surgery terrified me to be totally
honest it was like the world could end I
mean I know plenty of people that have
lost children and didn't want to be part
of that
When Matthew was before 1 year
of age still a baby he had
craniosynostosis surgery but as he grew
the bones did not heal as completely as
they could and so as he grew older and
older we could see the area became more
more obvious as he grew in size so much
that his forehead had areas
where you could see the brain pulsations
through the bone that was missing this
was really tough for the kid because he
loved baseball and loved sports and he
had to wear a protective helmet while we
were waiting for his bone to be thick enough and strong enough for a more
definitive reconstruction
you know he
went for his one-year checkup and that's
when they found out hey we're gonna have
to do another one and you know
Matthew he's little boy and he wants to
do everything he can and he couldn't he
was held back he would wear a helmet at
school you know some kids..he didn't have
many friends made fun of them didn't
understand because he has this big scar
on his head.  They always looked at him
made him uncomfortable
it's hard when your son comes up to you and goes
mom is it my fault I'm like this or how
come God made me be like this, and
you get to sit there and think it's not
your fault buddy
and God said you're gonna be special and
you could handle it you're strong I
think the parents knew and we knew that
if if he couldn't deal with any more we
would you jump in earlier if we really
really had
As he's growing he
watching all the boys his age play
sports until and play and play and it's so
hard so we we talked to Claire the the
nurse with Dr. Lin and she's amazing
as well and then talked Dr. Lin and we
asked like is there any way that he can
play a sport because you knew he's going
for another surgery but he's trying so
hard because you know he's getting upset
he goes you know what let me let me talk
to the neurosurgeon let me see if
there's a way we can make it to where
you can play a sport before surgery the
concern was any impact to his forehead
could put his brain at significant risk
so as long as he was regularly wearing a
helmet both during batting as well as
fielding we were allowing him to play
but it definitely made him stand out
amongst his peers so finally at the last
minute they said okay but you have to
wear this helmet and that promise I'll
wear it I won't take it off at prompt I
promise he talked to the coach and told
the coach hey I want to play for you but
I have to have another surgery in July he
goes it's gonna go good I know it's
gonna go good so will you please hold my
spot
so the coach said okay well we'll make
sure your spot's there you can play for
us so he went in and you know he had to
have the surgery that July they
used the new 3d model with his so they
were able to use his own bone hoping
that this own bone would go great
before surgery this is what Matthew's skull
literally looked like he had a big kind
of batwing kind of defect here and as
you can imagine with the skin covering
his forehead you could just see the
pulsations through here now before we
had 3d printing we could try to do
surgery trying to get pieces that match
this using sterile paper or something
like that but you can't capture this
unique human curve of our foreheads and
of our brow region above our eyes what
we did was we 3d printed the the defect
which I'm showing you here
and using this as a template this is not
like a piece of paper it's holding the
unique shape of our foreheads or of in
this case of a young boys forehead and
this and use this to try to find a part
of the skull that has as the appropriate
angle that would match the forehead this
is too big so what we did was we used
our 3d printing Center to print this
into two pieces and then by breaking
them to two pieces we can take this and
find exactly where on the rest of the
skull look this angle is completely
matched and over here this angle is
matched we can do that during surgery
with our sterilized 3d printed pieces
now I can cut bone from these areas and
move them here to get a perfect match
because we waited for the appropriate
age his bone was thick enough to split
and the split bone meaning you can
double double the shape into two and the
original piece goes back to the donor
site so that these areas won't have
holes either and that's something that
couldn't be done before we have 3d
printing to not only match the shape but
match that unique three-dimensional
angle that it has and so now Matthew has
crisp bone in these regions he's playing
baseball
surgery went great
it just was great we were home in three
days was a good surgery
