Anyway, Kate's surgery to repair her palate was exactly a month ago, and in hindsight, I can say that she has done beautifully. But for honesty's sake, I probably need to lay out the gory details (well, maybe not all of them). The first day was awful. Completely. She cried when they took her out of my arms. She screamed at me when I went to her in recovery. (I was going to insert a photo here, but it was just too awful, poor girl.) She clung to me whimpering for about an hour after that. The only thing that cheered her up was when we both got to ride in a wheelchair that took us to her room. I asked her if she liked the ride, and with snot and tears and blood oozing out of her face she nodded yes. She slept most of that first day, allowing both Tim and I to comfort her. Naturally, she didn't sleep at all that night. On Day 2, she felt some better, but still did not want to drink anything, and we had to force any medications into her. She watched Elmo videos and cuddled with us, and was glad to go home later that day. (She also enjoyed playing tea party with Daddy.)
The next week was AWFUL. Feel free to read my previous posts for more detail.
Throughout all of this, she was extremely hesitant to let anyone look into her mouth. She was swollen (a lot) and bleeding (a little), and it was hard to see how it would look eventually. After about 2 weeks or so, she threw her little head back and laughed, and I saw a uvula - I was so excited!
She stayed on a soft diet for about 10-14 more days, with me progressively giving her more difficult things - but still nothing crunchy. She is now eating pretty much whatever she wants, although taco shells still scare me for some reason.
The inside of her mouth looks fabulous. I can still see some whitish areas down the middle that are still healing, and the ridge there is deeper than the other side. I'm not sure if this will change over time, or if she will always be able to feel where the cleft was in the roof of her mouth. There is still a pinkie-sized hole near her gum line that was left on purpose. It will close some on its own as the palate continues to heal. According to the doc, her mouth needed some room to grow. Once she is old enough for permanent teeth to begin to come in, it will be time to do a bone graft in her gum line and close off that hole.
The doc also clipped off a bit of extra skin that hung down where her lip was repaired back in 2007. That part of the surgery drove her crazy, and she was constantly trying to chew at her lip. Thankfully the stitches were on the inside, and she couldn't get at them. They mostly dissolved, but one tiny piece worked its way out of her lip. She pulled it free last week, and it hasn't seemed to bother her since. You can't even tell that there was work done there now. I don't know if she will choose to have further plastic surgery done or not. The lip line is a bit uneven, and her nose is slightly flat (you really only notice it if you are looking up her nose, which most of you will never have occasion to do). It really isn't even an option until she is a teenager, and by then she will be old enough to make that decision on her own.
Now, onto the dental update. Naturally, neither the dentist nor the oral surgeon has privileges at the same hospital as the plastic surgeon (so much for everything being coordinated), so we had to schedule the tooth extraction for 3 weeks later. One of her top teeth had rotted and broken off, and there was a visible cavity on the bottom, so we scheduled a semi-sedation visit with our dentist. She also did X-rays and found that there is no baby tooth or permanent tooth where the cleft was. That was a surprise to me, as I was sure I had seen a tooth up there at some point. Anyway, that means that she has two missing teeth on the top (the extracted one, and the non-existent one). She complained more about this procedure than about the surgery and asked for pain meds for a couple of days.
We have already had a stranger ask how she lost her tooth, and I just said that it was rotten and the dentist had to pull it. Let them think I am a bad mom for giving her too many sweets or whatever. I am not going to get into a dissertation on the oral health of cleft children in line at a grocery store. (Actually I may someday, but that day, I was so not up for it.)
So, that is the extremely long version of her recovery. The short version is that I think it looks great. People have been cracking me up by telling my how good it looks, when they have never seen the inside of her mouth, and that is where all of the surgery was done.
I will try to do updates on her speech and other adjustments soon. But this is enough for one night, don't ya think?
1 comment:
I can't help but say, I've seen kids with cleft lips before, and after they were repaired, they didn't look half as good as Kate does. So even if we CAN'T see inside, what we do see looks great. I'm glad it's over for a while. My friend Becky has a son who was born with a cleft lip, and apparently the dentist's visits don't get better as they get older. But Andy has done just fine--even played trumpet in the school band. Keep on plugging!
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