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