Today Willow had her five hour examination by various physicians and surgeons at Children's Hospital in Oakland to diagnose the condition of her cleft lip and pallet. I wasn't able to go because of work, but Victoria was with her while our friend Kim Smith stayed with Poppy at our house (such a gracious gift). Willow was a very brave girl, and the doctors were quite impressed with her lip repair, basically stating they couldn't really improve upon it. When she's older they might be able to reshape her nose a bit because her left nostril is a little out of round and alignment. They didn't seem to be too surprised by the nature of her cleft pallet, feeling as though they could repair that without many complications. (Apparently there's an 85% success ratio with the first surgery for cleft repairs.) Simply put, they graft pieces of her pallet skin together to cover the cleft, creating a rather normal pallet but without the typical bone most of use have up there. It will take several weeks to heal, requiring Willow's arms to be shackled with what's known as "No-No's" (devices that keep her arms straight so that she can't stick anything in her mouth while the incisions mend). We're sure she'll be in some pain through the recovery process, but of course she'll be completely "out" under anesthetic during surgery. Some have asked us what causes cleft lip/pallet and we're told it's somewhat of a medical mystery; believed to possibly be genetic or environmental, or perhaps a little bit of both..., we just don't know.
Victoria could do a much better job than me of describing further details about her visit to the doctors, but for now this is helpful to all of us as we consider Willow's next steps to completely restore her health. Oh, one more thing; I guess the doctor heard a heart murmur while listening to Willow's heartbeat, so she'll need an echo-cardiogram to determine the extent of her murmur before we can take any further steps on her pallet surgery. We're hopeful she can receive the medical care on her pallet sometime in August.
Thank you for your prayers, support and interest. We'll provide further updates as we know more.
Warmly in Christ,
Tom
PS: Haven't heard anything from Austin lately, nor Barret (we didn't expect to hear from him), but just had a very nice iChat (phone-video) with Annie. It was hard for Poppy to see Annie on the screen and yet not be able to touch her; big watery eyes during the whole conversation. Kinda sweet and sad, all at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment