Surgery Redo!

While the cast removal was great news, the bad news that came along with this step in the process is that the closure of his palate and the muscles which we thought were fully repaired by the surgery, have since popped open. The surgeon confirmed at his post-op recheck on Monday that we will have to redo much of the surgery. We were told prior to the surgery (as part of that pesky informed consent) that there is a 12 percent risk of this happening, but it is so disappointing to have to put him through the pain yet again.

The surgeon said we'll have to wait 3-6 months to redo it and that it gets tougher the second time due to the scarring from the first surgery -- his exact words were, "piffle" (I think it's a polite cuss word) when he looked in Ahn-Bao's mouth.

We are in the process of scheduling Ahn-Bao's first assessment with the school district for speech sometime in the next month. We were thinking this would be about the right time after healing from his surgery. Now that we have to redo the surgical correction, I guess the assessment will have to be done again after he has surgery again.

Ahn-Bao tries to talk all the time. He says a lot of things but almost nothing is understandable to anyone but the immediate family. We only really have the m and n consonants and they sound the same and sometimes a variation on "L". He seems to really watch us when we talk and I can see he is trying to copy what we do with our mouths. We have some signs and some words that we can get pretty good at from context (and sometimes from the number of syllables, e.g., "helicopter" and "motorcycle" but "mail truck" and "school bus" sound the same so we have to look around!) so that his wants and needs are usually able to be made known. But it is just so frustrating to him (and maybe more so to us) when he can't communicate more complicated thoughts and feelings -- especially when I see him trying but I can't make it out.