Thursday, November 20, 2008

Cleft Clinic Time Again


While Sadie has had numerous doctor appointments in the last 6 months, Hannah has mostly had a break from all that. But today, it was her turn. Hannah and I spent some time this morning at the cleft clinic. This was our 8th visit there (counting pre-op and post-op visits), so pretty routine by now. Today's visit was great - good news and very quick. We were in and out in about an hour and 15 minutes. Typically it's about 3 hours. ENT / Audiology was good. She didn't have a formal hearing test this time because her last 3 were normal. But they did check her tubes and check for fluid in her ears. All was good there. Her speech evaluation was good too. The evaluator said pretty much what we already knew - her resonance (voice quality - often a problem for kids with clefts) was great, she had just a couple of articulation errors but they didn't seem cleft-related, and she seemed to still have a few language delays. Yep - that's what her therapists at school and the university clinic she goes to also say. And it's also what I still notice at home. Our visit with Dr. Grant was quick too. He's happy with her and said she looked and sounded great. He said to just keep putting sunscreen on her lip for outside activities and to "enjoy the lull". He said were in a time period now for her to just enjoy being a kid. (She does that anyway!) He still wants to see her once a year to check up on her, but doesn't intend to do anything else with her for a long time. He does want us to come back this summer, just before she turns six to see the oral surgeon who will do her bone graft. You may remember that she still has a hole in her gumline that will be repaired with a bone graft to give her permanent teeth somewhere to anchor to when they come in. He thinks she has a while before that, but likes to send kids to have x-rays done by about age 6. He said often it's still too early to do anything at 6, but at least you know and some kids need some minor orthodontic work prior to that surgery so it gives you time for that if necessary.


While not as busy as it been in the past, there were a few other kids we saw in passing and in the waiting area at the clinic. Hannah commented a couple times "his (or her) lip looks like mine!" or "She's from China, like me!" (We saw two other children adopted from China at the clinic this morning). It's neat to see her identify and form connections. We got to meet sweet little Madi (also adopted from China) who was at her 3 week post-op visit. I had hoped we might get a little more time to visit, but our appointment was moved up an hour earlier than originally, so we only slightly overlapped times. But Hannah's description of Madi was right on: "Aww, she's SO cute!".


We were out of there so much quicker than I anticipated and since I had already taken the whole day off of school, Hannah and I decided to do some fun things. We shopped a little, ate lunch in Subway, and played at the park together. Hannah kept grinning and saying "this is a FUN day". It was so sweet and I enjoyed getting to spend a little time with my big girl. Then, we went to suprise Sadie and pick her up early and headed outside to play some more. Now, as Hannah says, "it's back to normal!".

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