Emma the Brave

Last Monday, Miss Emma checked in at Batson for another palate repair surgery. When Emma got home from China, her cleft lip had already been repaired but her cleft palate was really significant and it has taken three surgeries in 19 months to get it hopefully to where it should be. This time, they did a Pharyngeal flap procedure to correct the airflow during speech. Her speech has been hypernasal because of the opening. This surgery helps to alleviate that and improve the clarity of her speech. Our initial observation is that the surgery was a success bc she is less nasal and actually able to make letter sounds that she could not say before....YAY!!!  She will obviously be spending some time with our amazing speech therapists to learn how to properly use her flap and it should greatly improve her speech (like within 1% of the normal range.....I'll take it!)

This little girl is so brave and tough. She only cried before going to the OR when I took her bow😂

They had to use some pretty strong anesthesia and morphine during the procedure so it took a pretty good while for her to wake up afterwards. As we talked to the surgeon after the surgery, we were amazed to hear him describe how he actually does the procedure. They strap her to the table and completely rotate the table where her head is down and feet are in the air. He told us about what exactly he did and compared it to putting together a ship in a bottle. He's amazing at what he does and truly loves his job. He told us that when he was doing a rotation during his surgical residency, he watched his teacher repair a cleft palate. He noticed that the cleft lip repair did not look as nice as some of the others he had seen his teacher do and he asked him about it. His teacher explained that he in fact did not do that lip repair and it indeed did not look good.  But to that family, it was perfect because their son was born with a big hole in his face where his lip should have been and after that surgery, their baby had a lip and it was perfect and they loved it. Dr. Clay said he decided then and there that cranial facial pediatric plastic surgery was what he wanted to do because if he could not only change the life of a patient but also the whole family, then that is what he wanted to be a part of doing. Love him and his big heart!

We were told that this surgery was incredibly painful and Emma would be pretty pitiful for a while. When will these doctors realize that she is not your typical patient????  After waking up from a very long nap/sleeping off the anesthesia, we started to see glimpses of our girl by around 7 that first night. No worries...by 4am when the nurse came in to check her vitals, she asked if we needed anything and Emma screamed "POPSICLES!!!!!!!"  So, that is what she got....at 4am😳

By the next morning, she was amazing all the doctors and nurses by doing so well. She even got to go to pet therapy downstairs! 

She watched the iPad a lot as we tried to make her drink lots and lots of fluids (drinking fluids is the key to getting out of the hospital!)

Because we frequent the surgical floor at the hospital so often, we have gotten to know the staff really well!  One of the sweet child life specialist brought Emma a tutu and a new bag of mega blocks. Emma thought it was the best thing ever and proudly paraded around the halls of Batson. 

We were discharged from the hospital after 2 days. Y'all, I'm serious. Emma is a superhero!  She has far exceeded every hope I had for her recovery and I can promise you, if you saw her today, you would not know that she had major surgery just a couple of days ago!  We are so thankful for the prayers lifted up on her behalf, for the unbelievable strength of our little girl and for the amazing care she has been given at Batson. As much as we love it there, we hope to not have to visit them again until she is 5 for her lip revision surgery!