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OK though today wasn’t a major surgery, I thought I’d post an update anyway.

We were late to the hospital due to a lot of traffic. But it all worked out. She ended up going in at 10:30 (instead of 9:30)… and we were in the car 50 minutes later. Fast I know, but this was minor compared to a lot of things she had done as it was a steroid injection to the tongue to help with swelling from the previous laser surgery.

After Andy left the Operating room to bring ME in, 15 minutes later the Dr. came to see us. He figured he’d examine her mouth a bit while he had her out since she’s not very cooperative when she is awake.

Here are the basics of the convo:

They are taking it easy on the tongue for a while to see how she grows into it. They don’t want to do too much as you can’t add to the tongue size- only decrease it, so they are treading with precaution in order to make sure it doesn’t become ‘too small’. And yes while it still appears quite thick, any surgery to it makes it smaller in length as well. This does not include laser procedures as they affect the surface only.

His next thoughts on working on the tongue is to make an incision to the floor of the mouth underneath the tongue and fix the current problem of it seeming to be tethered to the bottom of the mouth.

Basically this means she doesn’t have enough freedom or mobility because it’s stuck down a bit too much with all the cysts there.

An x-ray will be planned to make an online model of her jaw line in preparation for her future surgery- where they cut the jaw bones on either side, pull it back and lift it up, since it’s displaced. They need to determine the right timing on this surgery and be sure they don’t do it prematurely or too late- I guess it’s an age/growth thing.

This surgery could be a while away but they still need to make the necessary steps in determining not only when it should be, but precisely how it should be done.

So while talking to him about all this, we then noticed the person who recently joined his team and was standing by his side during the conversation was also one of the Doctors that was there in the room for my c-section/EXIT procedure the day ME was born and also aided in her first ever surgery at 7 days old with her old ENT Doctor (the same day she received her tracheostomy). Pretty cool to run into her as she remembered ME & all.

After talking, we went to see ME, and she was already awake and wanting us. We took her home and she napped in the car. She was absolutely fine today, just a bit tired from being up early, not napping that long and then of course having anesthesia today. So she went to bed quite early. And we’ll be headed there earlier too as it’s been a long day!