This is Part 2 of this month’s post. The first part was solely about school; this one will be about everything else that’s happened in our lives over the past month. This is going to be a pretty short post. I thought I had more to share, but there are only a few things. I probably could have combined this with the school post from a couple of days ago.
Oral Surgery Update
We’ve been trying to find an oral surgeon since February who could tell us if anything could be done with James’ mouth to allow more room for his tongue. His bottom jaw is so narrow that his tongue doesn’t sit flat on the bottom of his mouth like it normally should.
We started with the oral surgeon that removed a bunch of James’ teeth several years ago, only to find out that the doctor doesn’t do surgery at the hospital anymore. He gave us a name of a colleague who was affiliated with a hospital, but it was much farther away. Stacy “let her fingers do the walking”—I know I am showing my age here—and found an oral surgeon who does surgeries out of the hospital not too far from our house. After meeting with him, he admitted that he was a bit hesitant about performing the type of procedure that James would require. He told us that if were to get some CT scans of James and send them to him that he would pass them on to some colleagues at Loyola Medical Center in Chicago. That, too, was a bust, and again we were referred to someone else.
It only took seven months and four appointments with different oral surgeons, but I think we might have found one that is up to the challenge. In late September we took James to the UIC Craniofacial Center, and the doctors there have some ideas that sound promising. If they do decide that they do want to proceed with the surgery, it will happen either later this year, or early 2024. Fingers crossed.
Odds and Ends
Stacy’s parents bought us an early Christmas present. It’s an inflatable decoration for our front yard of Santa Claus pushing an elf in a wheelchair.
The rescue that we adopted Maggie from had a reunion at a local forest preserve. While most of the other dogs there were interested in the other dogs, Maggie was more interested in the people and the food they were eating. Maggie is wearing a onesie in the picture below because she had a couple of cysts removed from her back and she loves to roll around in the grass.
Finally, I’d like to promote a little business that Stacy found: Mel’s Corner. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve accidentally cleared the settings on James’ feeding pump, and then try to remember what those settings were. Mel’s Corner makes custom stickers that fit the door of the feeding pump perfectly. Stacy had her make a sticker with James’ name and the pump settings:
