Obturator

I haven't given you a clefty update in a while!

We are chugging along with speech therapy. Sammy is getting more intelligible all the time. We have a most amazing private speech therapist (let's call her Miss C) who has been one of our gifts from God. She has so much experience as a speech pathologist, and she knows kids with cleft issues. And she loves our kids. And she loves us too.

Hang on, I need a Kleenex. Tearing up now because I can't even believe how blessed we are. She is really MOST AMAZING.

I actually have makeup on today and am leaving in a little while to take David to the hospital. Don't want to ruin that...

My makeup, that is...

Anyhoo, speech therapy has been going well for both munchkins but Miss C had some concerns about David's hypernasality. She said maybe he would need a p-flap surgery (to make his flappy soft palate at the back of his throat work and actually close) or maybe an obturator (which is a plastic piece that plugs up the fistulas toward the front of D's mouth~kind of looks like a retainer if you ever had braces). Miss C wasn't exactly sure, so we all took a trip to the speech path who coordinates our cleft palate clinic to get her opinion. Let's call her Miss T.

And this tells you how amazing Miss C is. I always admire health professionals with tons of experience who reach out to other professionals to get their advice. My dad's cancer doc did this, and our fertility doc did this, and now our Most Amazing Miss C did this.

So we all went down to Miss T's office which is about an hour south of us. Miss T is like a cleft-palate-guru-goddess. I imagine the members on the cleft team listen to her advice like gold. I can see why an acquaintance of mine makes the one hour drive down to Miss T every week with her daughter. I know I am gushing, but these two women are so amazing.

Miss T saw David and had him make sounds and checked the air leaking out of his nose during different sounds and looked at his soft palate while he made other sounds with his mouth open. That's my nutshell explanation. Her diagnosis: Let's start with the obturator. She thinks there is some movement in his soft palate (this news is major hugeness) and she thinks his soft palate may be long enough (yay!). You really need a scope done to say this for sure, but Miss T thinks that D's fistula in the front is so ginormous that he is compensating with incorrect speech patterns to make intelligible sounds. And that tells you how smart D is. So Miss T suggests that if David doesn't have to compensate for air leaking out of the front of his mouth, he may be able to learn to use his soft palate properly and then we can see if he actually needs the p-flap surgery.

From Wikipedia: A palatal obturator is a prosthesis that totally occludes an opening such as an oral-nasal fistula (in the roof of the mouth). They are similar to dental retainers, but without the front wire. 

Dentists make obturators. And we are blessed with a dentist with tons of experience, and who actually has experience making obturators. We will meet him this morning at the O.R. where David will have the mold for the obturator made under anesthesia. The dentist will take the mold to his obturator-making-person and then next week we will go back to the dentist's office and David will have his obturator fitted.

This is so exciting.

David didn't sleep well last night. He was worried. Poor guy. Please pray that things go well and that he doesn't feel too sick from anesthesia and that his throat doesn't hurt too much.

I think David will love his obturator, and that his speech will be so much clearer.

(((hugs))),
chris


But blessed are those who trust in the Lord
and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.

Jeremiah 17:7


*****
P.S. I was not able to post this until after we got home ~~ David did great in the O.R. and our dentist made two great moulds... obturator should be fitted and coming home next week! Yahoo!