Our granddaughter, Lauren, had some surgery yesterday. We have been anticipating it for months. The surgery is cutting edge and is so new there are not statistics to know the success rate of this particular surgery. Lauren was born with a cleft in her soft palate (8 years ago). At 10 months old she had cleft repair surgery. She has had speech therapy since she was 3 years old. She has had other surgeries that are related to her speech and hearing issues - tubes placed in both ears, tubes surgically removed from both ears and the holes in both eardrums surgically repaired. God bless her, she is so brave and stoic through all of this.
At the end of last summer her speech therapist advised that she see her cleft doctor again because of some "hypo-nasality" in her speech. Basically there was too much air escaping from the wrong place on certain sounds. Follow me? Good. The therapist suggested that another surgery may or may not be called for. So, said appointment was made amid the worry that a cleft repair would be much more traumatic on an 8 year old as opposed to a 10 month old. Besides the fact that Daughter Number One was expecting child #3 in September....the straw, the camel's back - get it?
So, they saw the cleft doctor and to our amazement there was this new procedure! The cleft doctor proposed to liposuction fat from her abdomen and inject it into her soft palate to plump it up so that it would function more accurately and sound production would be improved. The best part is that instead of a 6 week restrictive recovery period - there would be zero recovery time!! Oh jump with joy!
And yesterday they did just that. The doctors say that the surgery went as planned. Now we wait to see if her speech is improved. I am sure it was my imagination, but I think I already heard a difference today when she got home from the hospital.
While Lauren, mom, dad and baby Super Carrot were at the hospital for the surgery, Mr. Macho and I were taking care of T-Bone. We loaded up our blow up mattress and spent two nights camping out on Number One Daughter's living room floor. Now, this was my first time sleeping on that thing. And it wasn't totally terrible. But I wouldn't want more than two nights in a row on it. I am just going to say that I will be so very happy to sleep in my own real bed tonight.
One more thing. We played a new game with the grandchildren. They got it for Christmas. It is called "Doggie Doo". Yes, it has to do with what it sounds like. It is a short game and it is silly. And it was fun. Go figure.
And last night, after months of waiting for this surgery I felt like there was this little door in my chest that opened up and a huge beam of gratitude shot into the night and lit up the sky. It was my prayer of thanksgiving, and that is how I imagined it would look. One small surgery for Lauren, one huge hurdle for her mother. Thank you, God. Continued blessings on them, please?
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