Circle for Jason at school

Jason has been asking to go to school all weekend but didn't outline exactly why...we received this lovely email form his teacher tonight and understand that what he was saying was "my class is so great" "We had a great circle on Friday to wish Jason well. He got a little teary and sweaty near the end but it was very moving to hear the kids wish him well, telling him they would miss him and why. One girl asked him to say hi to someone she knew who was already in hospital. There were just the right amount of laughs too. They all had really personal things to say to him and I had a tough time keeping it together myself. It`s amazing how children can just take care of things on their own, sometimes, without adults getting too involved."

how we got here

How did we get here? Jason was born with a unilateral cleft lip, a full cleft palate (soft and hard palate) and cleft in his jawbone. Because of this, he has had several surgeries, starting with a lip repair when he was 7 months, a palate repair when he was 14 months, a pharyngoplasty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmentation_pharyngoplasty) when was 5 and a bone graft from his hip to repair his jaw bone when he was 5 as well. The pharyngoplasty was a major decision for us because the surgery can be risky and involved time in the ICU during recovery. However, he did see almost immediate improvements in his speech…until sometime in Grade 2, when we noticed his speech start to deteriorate. He had a scope done this past summer that revealed that the flap had “dehissed” – let go in some way and disappeared. The scope also showed that while Jason lateral throat muscles were working well, his palate never touched the back of his throat in the production of speech, making it impossible to make some sounds clearly and allowed air to escape through his nose. We then had to make a decision about surgical intervention, and about whether to go with a pharyngoplasty again, or try something slightly less risky first. We chose the latter, and Jason will be undergoing a furlow cleftoplasty surgery. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1280866-overview#aw2aab6b6