Homecoming

Today I could hardly wait for our family to be reunited! Dave and Josie's flights were on time and the kids and I were anxiously waiting to greet them in the airport when they arrived. Josie looks beautiful; her mouth is much more symmetrical and she has these dainty little lips now...perfect for putting lip gloss on :-) Her eye is still very swollen but has opened up more. The doctors in NY found that Josie has a clogged tear duct in her left eye; they tried to correct it while they had her in surgery but said they "couldn't reach it". Today I've been trying to track down a Pediatric Ophthalmologist to correct it. The NY docs suggested having the specialist that corrects her tear duct also remove the stitches below her eye. This is proving to be a challenge because of the time crunch but Josie's optometrist has pulled some strings for us and we have an appointment for tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. for a consultation. Fingers crossed this specialist can squeeze her in by the date she needs her stitches to come out. The down-side to her not getting into the Ophthalmologist soon would be that she'd be put under anesthesia twice. The first would be with Dr. Franks, who would put her under to take out the stitches and remove her drain and then the second time would be for the tear duct procedure. In my opinion that's one too many times, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

The best news from this whole chaotic trip/surgery is that Josie doesn't have to go back for more surgeries until next summer!!! Once we get this tear duct surgery out of the way, I think we'll definitely feel the weight of our worries lift and welcome normalcy for awhile.

Next summer Dr. Waner wants to do the nerve and muscle transplant, which would be broken up into two surgeries. The first would be the nerve graft and the second would be the muscle graft. These procedures will help Josie's facial expressions on her left side. She'll be able to lift her smile, frown, pucker, maybe even whistle or blow out her birthday candles (that last one is a big deal to her). Right now her left side around her mouth is somewhat comparable to a person who has suffered a stroke.

That more or less sums up our updates. The one thing that everyone always asks is "how many more surgeries?" and I wish I had a clear cut answer for that. The procedures I know of for sure are the two next summer and at some point they will remove the tumor on her forehead. Its hard to say how many steps there will be in-between. One step at a time, right now I'm basking in the glory of being surgery free for awhile!