Children's Hospital - Good news??

Well, we went to Children's Hospital today. It wasn't too bad to actually get to, but the hospital itself was WONDERFUL! What a working organism the way they get you where you need to go and everyone was soooooo helpful! We went to the 4400 wing/floor which is the surgical/cranialfacial area and the room was FULL of little toddlers/a few tweens. We didn't wait long though. We signed in, filled out some paperwork and in 15 minutes, BOOM, we were in the exam room. Within 5 minutes Dr. Murthy showed up and started talking with us and with Matthew. Funny thing, Matthew didn't want anything to do with Dr. Murthy! LOL......the doctor tried to touch him to see his face and Matthew didn't want ANYTHING to do with him and put his hands up to me (Momma) to pick him up. ***For those of you who don't know, this is a VERY excellent thing!!!!! Bonding! Matthew has/is bonding with me to the point that he knows I'm mommy and others are strangers!!! YES!!! This is what SHOULD happen!! Thank you Lord!!***

Anywho.....Dr. Murthy was patient and we ended up putting Matthew face up on half of the doctor's knees and half on mommy. That worked just fine. Matthew opened up his mouth and allowed the doctor to see everything he needed to. MATTHEW'S CLEFT PALATE HAS BEEN FIXED BY CHINA!! Is this a good thing? Yes and no. Dr. Murthy said that yes it was fixed but Matthew has a fistula (the hole behind his teeth). From the looks of it it's been awhile since his cleft palate surgery. *** Our adoption agency nor us knew ANYTHING about this surgery! China never said a thing. NADA!*** The doc said that it wasn't a bad fix, but that "he" could have definitely done better! I tell ya, as a parent, I was happy to see that he had a cleft palate surgery, but in the next breath, to hear that it wasn't a "good" fix???? Let's just say, your heart sinks! Your mad, sad, happy, angry.......all of the above. I wanted to cry, knowing that he could have had a better fix of his cleft palate and his cleft lip.....but like the doc said, we work with what we have, nothing more, nothing less. He went over what would happen with Matthew from now til he turns about 10 years old. He will need quite a bit of extensive work done until about the age of 10. Dr. Murthy took pictures of Matthew's lips/face. (By the way, Matthew's lip is misaligned, which we already knew, but the doc said a quick "nip" would fix that with no problems. The fistula too. BUT.........we need to wait until we know what Matthew can speak!)

We have two things going against us at the moment. First, he is just learning english, so speech is SLOW.........and second? Because of his cleft palate, we don't know what he can truly say and what he can't. If he cannot speak properly, they can do surgery to semicorrect that, but if he can speak then they will NOT do surgery and concentrate more on the speech therapy. So......NO MORE SIGN LANGUAGE for Matthew. He needs to start SPEAKING! We have to make him speak. Make him ask for things. No more guessing.....or just knowing what he wants!! Hopefully we can do this with no problems. We'll see. ***keep your fingers crossed***

Anyway, to make it short and sweet, we have another appointment and instead of the surgeon, which Dr. Murthy is, we will meet with the WHOLE Cranialfacial team. It will be an ALL DAY AFFAIR! From 11:30am to 4:30pm, May 1st. We will know more then. We will know what they want to do and when and to what!

Thank you guys for your prayers. Seeing Children's Hospital for the first time and seeing how they do things was VERY nice! I can't say enough about them!!!