First Cleft Team Visit

July 30 was our first visit with the cleft team that we'll be working with for Lydia's cleft repair. We arrived for the appointment around 8am and there were quite a few other families in the waiting room including a few China girls. We were shown to into a waiting room that had a few toys and such to keep Little One occupied.

Four hours later we were done and Lydia had been seen by an ENT, audiologist, geneticist, speech pathologist, dentist, behaviour, plastic surgeon and the cleft team nurse. Lydia did great, a lot better than we had expected her to react to seeing so many strangers in such a short amount of time. By the end of the day she was cozying up to the plastic surgeon and trying to get his attention. The cleft team visit is something that we will have every year and right now we're feeling lucky to have such easy access to a team of physicians that will give Lydia all of the care she'll need.

Lydia has some fluid in her ears so she'll be getting ear tubes at the same time as her palate surgery. In the hearing test she was not responding on her left side as well as she did for her right side, but hopefully the tubes will take care of that. The plastic surgeon said that her mouth and jaw look good and we're hoping that she'll only need the one surgery. There's always the possibility that her palate will be too short, or that holes (fistulas) in the palete will form after the surgery. She does has some thick scarring on her lip that may need to be fixed later but it is still healing as her lip surgery was only performed at the end of March.

We're currently waiting on confirmed dates for her surgery but it'll probably be sometime in September. It is best to get the cleft repaired as soon as possible to avoid any further speech delays or problems.