Why St. Louis?

At this point, you might be wondering why I selected the surgeon I felt least comforted by and whose office is nearly 1000 miles away. Well, here are my reasons:

1) Dr. Lenke is very well practiced.

2) He also works to better the overall technique. In fact, do to his procedure of placing screws on every vertebrate to be fused, rather than just the extremes, he is able to achieve the maximum possible correction, and has no need to perform a thoracoplasty (rib removal/regrowth). My xrays will look like that shown on the first blog.

3) Not having a thoracoplasty means one less scar.

4) No incision for bone removal to be used as bone graft because he will use cadaver bone (yuck, but if it reduces the number of scars I'll have I'll take it) and bone morphogenic proteins (BMP).

5) Very very accessible staff. In fact, I can reach them directly, no need to leave a voice mail and wait a couple of days for a call back.

6) Dr. Lenke's office is very familiar with patients who travel a long distance and try to work with that fact when scheduling.

7) I realized that I could categorize the surgeon's persona as one of two types, either as a surgeon or a doctor. By that I mean a surgeon's primary goal is to cut you open and fix you, and a doctor's is to take care of you throughout time. I view Dr. Lenke as fitting more in the surgeon category and Dr. Horton in the doctor category. My surgery will hopefully be a one time deal, which a year or so of follow-up visits, and a result that will affect me for a lifetime. In this case, I decided that a surgeon, rather than a caring doctor, is more important. So I selected Dr. Lenke. I'm sure that both Dr. Lenke and Dr. Horton are equally capable, and in fact had I only seen Dr. Horton, I would have felt completely comfortable having him as my surgeon. He was kind, caring, thoughtful, and sympathetic. But I was given a choice, and ultimately I choose Dr. Lenke.