Grace is facing 4 separate issues in her mouth and face: shown here, she has a HOLE behind her two front teeth -- not a true fistula in the sense of a palate re-opening, but a new hole formed due in part, (my professional opinion yuck yuck) to her palate being pushed apart too abruptly after last year's surgeries. The plastic surgeon, Dr. Williams at Scottish Rite, is also proposing to do another corrective procedure on her palate, a frenotomy (frenectomy? frenotomy?) (separating her front lip from the gums because hers is completely attached thereby disabling her from puckering her top lip at all) and doing some cosmetic work on her lip. The scariest part of this to me (other than her risking life and limb) is the repair to her hole: Dr. Williams wants to cut a flap in her tongue, sew it to the hole above, wire her teeth together for 3 weeks and, in a follow-up procedure, snipping the two apart. I was nervous about the possibility of the palate rejecting the tongue flap/graph and/or deforming her tongue and screwing up her speech even more.
After asking for everyone to pray and receiving a 2nd opinion from another oral plastic surgeon, we are all feeling a lot more confident in the procedures and our faith in Dr. Williams is renewed. Sorry dude, I love ya, but I need to know God wants this surgery too.
I will post the date of impending surgery once we have any specifics. All the prayers are keeping her brave and funny as always. My favorite Grace story of the last few weeks: we were standing in the bathroom and I was brushing Frannie's hair. I got a whiff of gas and asked "Whose got the toots around here?" Gracie immediately pointed to her head and said "I got toots. I got ear toots." She means ear tubes. She's just so deadpan, it's hysterical.
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