Saturday, February 12, 2011

Anna and Her Jaw











Our daughter, Anna is scheduled for a consult with our jaw surgeon this week. She has had many cleft lip/palate and nose surgeries but this one for her jaw we have been waiting for a long time to do. We thought it was going to be done last Fall but it got moved to this year because her mouth ( teeth were not quite in the correct position ) . We know what they are planning to do and as you can tell her jaw has significant issues. They will bring out her jaw on the top as much as they can surgically but it is too much to do it all with surgery. So she will have something like what Luke and Mya had on their legs- an external fixator on her head. It is a major surgery but one that has success when you have the jaw issues that Anna has. She will be in this for at least 6 weeks and I will do daily turns on it to move her jaw into the correct position. One thing that is different they say about the pins and wires into the skull is that there are not the pin site infections to worry about like there are on the fixators on the arms and legs. The head is considered " clean" ...That was the most difficult part of Luke and Mya's fixator experiences as well as the physical therapy... again this is mimized for Anna's surgery... thankfully. She also struggles with FAS and the front 4 top teeth are missing. More update will be given after her appointment on Tuesday at Hopkins.
I thought I would share about Anna because today she brought me her block creation of robots. She is actually very good with her creations and she was very proud of it too.

3 comments:

Kelly said...

I will make sure and pray that all goes well for Anna! Sounds like quite a process! I hope she is excited and not nervous! She is a beatiful girl! And this surgery being successful will only enhance that more!

Christie M said...

That sounds very painful. We will pray for Anna that all will go well.

eliz said...

Keeping Anna in my prayers. I heard that the "fixators" can be very painful? I hope not.
I love her building- very colorful!