Post Op Appointment

This morning, Rachel had her first post op appointment.

Our appointment was at 10:45 and we were in a room by 11:25 (not bad!!!). We ended up arriving a half hour early because we thought parking was going to be more of an issue. But it turns out the Lord had another Divine Appointment for us and I'll share that in another blog post.

It's a beautiful day and I thought this made for a cool picture. The building is Loma Linda University Medical Center and Children's Hospital, which is where Rachel's surgery was done.Dr. Martin was very pleased with how Rachel was looking on the outside as well as on the inside (her bone graft).

Rachel had a tooth that had grown in sideways in the cleft of her gum and I asked if he had to remove that. He did not. But what he did remove as a decayed and rotten tooth that had grown up into her nasal cavity (common in cleft children). He said this was the cause for the horrible smell we'd been noticing coming from her nose the last six to eight months, which was one of our concerns when we saw him in August.

The nasal stents need to stay in place for at least another week. Dr. Martin explained that there was a lot of scar tissue in her nose and scar tissue has the tendency to go back to how it was. Typically, stents stay in place for 1-3 weeks to keep the scar tissue from going back to how it was prior to surgery. So she has the nasal stents at least for another week. He also said it could take up to six months for her nose to become her 'new normal' look. Her diet has been changed from a no chew diet to a soft food/no chew diet for example scrambled eggs, mac and cheese, etc. When I told him I considered those things to be a chewy food, he said she could have soft foods that didn't require chewing in the front, because of her bone graft.

After a few pictures were taken for her chart, and an appointment made for next Monday we were done. We went to Baker's for lunch where Rachel feasted on broken/bite sized pieces of french fries, a chocolate milkshake, and some bites of a bean cup!! She was loving it!