Maya Gebala’s mom shares major update: ‘If all goes great it could be her last surgery’

This photo array of Maya Gebala was shared by her mother. It depicts the changing pressure in Maya's head, prior to the surgical installation of a skull prosthetic on Monday. (Cia Edmonds/Facebook)

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Tumbler Ridge shooting survivor Maya Gebala may have undergone her fifth and final surgery on Monday.

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Her mother, Cia Edmonds, posted on Facebook that Maya was “in for her 5th surgery to date.” The goal of the surgery was to install a prosthetic skull piece, she noted.

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“If all goes GREAT it could be her last surgery. Keep us in your thoughts please,” wrote Edmonds.

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She described the trying week leading up to the surgery, stating the portion of Maya’s head where “the missing flap is, had swollen, deflated, and swollen again … It is very (hard) to watch, especially when we don’t really know why.”

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Moreover, during the past few weeks Maya had vomited “almost everyday, for no concrete reason. No assumed cause has been consistent. There’s speculations of course, but nothing is known, the brain is a mystery.”

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An image of Maya Gebala shared by her father. Photo by David Gebala /Facebook

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Edmonds said the hope is that the new prosthetic barrier “will enforce increased pressure to minimize cerebral fluid flow… It is the highest hope, that this will all regulate itself in time.. and as a result, release some pressure from her eye.”

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And she hopes the prosthetic will allow Maya to open her left eye, with the relieving of pressure “around the rest of her face.” She also wonders whether “maybe she will smile.”

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“Send your love. We appreciate it more (than) you know,” she concluded.

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She shared a photo array of Maya’s trajectory in the previous week, showing the “changing pressures” in Maya’s head.

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This development follows Maya’s family agreeing in early April to have her transferred to a hospital in Los Angeles for further treatment. As previously reported by National Post, UFC president Dana White offered to cover the medical and family costs involved and the family accepted.

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However, by late April the move hadn’t been made, as Maya wasn’t medically stable enough to facilitate the move. “We haven’t left Canada. The process to transfer (Maya) hasn’t been easy to say the least,” Edmonds wrote in an April 23 post to her Facebook page.

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Maya Gebala a victim of the school shooting in Tumbler Ridge B.C. (Photo credit: David Gebala/Facebook)

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Maya remains at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. She suffered significant brain damage after being shot by Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, during a mass shooting Feb. 10 in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., when six people were killed at a school and two others in a home.

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