Yes, once again I disappeared. I have signed up for Jen's Holiday home tour and need to start my 21 days over. Yesterday was such an incredible day that I absolutely must blog about it!!! We had our annual appointment at Shriner's hospital for Princess Bear (PB) yesterday. My parents both decided that they wanted to come along. It's a pretty rare thing for my dad to join us on these trips. We had to be in Chicago at 8am. That meant getting up around 3:45am and hitting the road by 4:30am. My mom drove the first part of it so PB and I crashed out in the back seat. She feels like the world is hers since I'm no longer stuffing her in a car seat. I'm not loving it but she's 5'1 and 92 pounds (at 9.5 months!). I have no idea where we stopped to grab some breakfast around 5:45am. After that my mom decided she was done driving and my dad opted for the back seat. Another one of those "this never happens" things. I drove the rest of the way into the city. All it took was 1 day of driving into Chicago during morning rush hour to remind me how much I don't like it. I really don't like it when I don't have complete control of the radio and my navigator's skills are seriously lacking. It reminded me that this girl is ready for some country living. So we got to Shriner's 4 minutes before PB's appointment and she was still in what she slept in (sweats) and crazy hair. After checking in and the LPN getting PB's vitals we had a few minutes to get PB changed. Any visit to Shriner's makes for a long day because you're seeing an entire team of professionals. A speech and language path, a psychologist, getting x-rays, having medical photographs taken, a pediatric dentist, an orthodontist, an audiologist and the surgeon. It's usually an 8 hour day. The psychologist and I were talking about PB's attitude in general and towards her physical anomalies. The psychologist was the first person to mention that PB is a very happy, very bubbly, outgoing little girl who seems to have no issue with her appearance. Her recommendation was to not have any further surgery unless medically needed. Ok with me!!! Then we discussed the possibility of PB having ADHD. At first she was very much leaning that way and talking about how much Ritalin PB would need. After spending some more time with PB she realized that while PB is a very fast moving, all over the place kid that she isn't ADHD. Her issues in school might very well be sensory and the fact that she can't retain the information and use it in different settings. This would explain why PB needs to hear things over and over and over again before it becomes a skill she can acquire. She had PB reading from a chapter book and was very impressed with PB's reading skills. She did say it would be a good idea if I could get a tutor to work with PB twice a week during the school year. She was pretty disgusted when she heard how bad the school district here is and how much they have cut services to kids. After that the next relevant meeting was with the speech path who once again recommended way more speech than PB is getting at school. She is contacting the school to see if they will increase PB's speech time. She said if that isn't possible that I should look into some other sources. There is a HUGE lack of speech paths around here but I'll see what I can get figured out.
The entire time we were there the kids were getting showered with toys and things to play with. I can't even list everything that PB received when she was there. I know that a new stuffed teddy bear, a Polly Pocket, at least 4 books, 2 coloring books and a new DVD were part of the haul. I honestly can't say enough about how wonderful the staff at Shriners is with the kids. It's just amazing.
Then we met with the surgeon. He indicated that if we wanted to go ahead with the surgery to bring PB's eyes closing together and build up the bridge of her nose that it would be good to do in sooner rather than later. I asked a few questions as far as whether it would help with her chronic sinus infections and it wouldn't. So, since the surgery would not help with anything medically and it is incredibly risky coupled with the fact that PB is very ok with her appearance we decided not to pursue surgery. If things change and PB starts to get teased and things change drastically then we can reevaluate the decision then. I was so incredibly excited, grateful and relieved that I walked around randomly saying "no more surgery" for the next 6 hours or so. That also isn't completely true because now we need to plan the surgery with the opthamologist to straighten PB's eyes. After that she will hopefully be surgery free forever.
The orthodontist also agreed that the surgery he previously thought PB would need to break her jaw and realign it would not be necessary. She's going to need a whole heck of a lot of orthodontic work but again NO SURGERY!!!!
So I'm an incredibly grateful mommy that feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. I can't think of a better thing to blog about!
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