So we met with the cleft palate team at Arnold Palmers on Friday. When I say team, I mean team. I've never met with that many doctors ever, even when I had my jaw surgery at Shands. There was a craniofacial surgeon, a pediatric orthodontist, a speech pathologist, an audiologist, a pediatrician, a pediatric ENT, a geneticist, and a social case worker! Oh my goodness!
The craniofacial surgeon only looked in her mouth and said there were three indications of her submucous cleft palate and it was obvious. Amazing! The ENT she sees locally was too scared to diagnose it and this guy just looks and sees it...granted this is one of his specialties, but still! The speech pathologist said she was losing air through her nose when speaking, so probably after having some speech therapy and getting her articulation down, she'll probably need a little palate repair. The orthodontist said that she had an issue with her teeth unrelated to the submucous cleft palate and would need to have baby teeth removed to give room for some teeth to come forward. The geneticist wants us to run some blood test to look for some clues as to why she was born with two heart defects and the submucous cleft palate. The audiologist would like her to have another hearing test since she's had the tubes put in her ears and they're healed now.
Whew! I made an appointment with another local dentist to discuss pulling her teeth. Unfortunately, Dr. Tuttle cannot do this, but has recommended this dentist to us. We have a follow-up appointment with the craniofacial surgeon in 8 weeks to see how far along her speech is coming by then.
I would say that God does have a small sense of humor. We put down when adopting that we were willing to take a child with either cleft lip/palate or a minor/moderate hear defect and instead of the either/or, he gave us the and :-) God never gives us more than we cannot handle, and to me, in a sense, this is easy!
In case you're curious what exactly a submucous cleft palate is, there's a good website that explains it very well: http://www.cleftline.org/publications/submucous
Wow thats a lot of doctors to see in one day.
ReplyDeleteI've never even heard of this kind of cleft palate. We miss you guys!!!!!
We miss you too! Yeah, I'll keep you posted on what happens. Hopefully we can get the speech therapy started soon :-)
ReplyDeleteYou guys are amazing. Ashlyn is so lucky to have parents like you (Kaylyn too)! It's a lot, but you guys can definitely handle it!
ReplyDeleteAshlyn is not the lucky ones :-) We are definitely the blessed ones! She has brought so much joy and love into our house on top of what we already had. We couldn't imagine our lives without her. God definitely chose her for us.
ReplyDeleteJust to show how old I am, I knew "Dr. Tuttle" when he was a child. :)
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, if Lance makes a recommendation, it's trustworthy.