Surgery??

I have learned why someone else should come with me to appts, especially when those appts involve Ellie!

Ellie had an appt on Wednesday morning at the VPI clinic at Children's. If you don't know what VPI is check is out here. How it has taken this long for someone to mention this to me I don't know..but off we went. She was seen by a nurse and then by a speech therapist to evaluate her. She got to wear a cool headpiece that had a plastic visor with an attached microphone under her nose. I wish I had brought my camera! She did a great job and after the testing, the speech therapist told me she doesn't have VPI. There wasn't any air coming out her nose which is good, I guess. We continue to rule out things that she could have which is great. We just want to make sure there is nothing structurally hampering the development of her speech. So the doctor decided not to scope her based on her results. However the speech therapist recommended we get a voice evaluation. They listen to her talk, etc and then they do another kind of scope that looks at her vocal cords. She thinks she has nodules on her vocal cords. However, all they do in kids that have nodules is practice good speech and push fluids. She probably got them from all of her crying, yelling and loud talking. I will probably try to have it done, but we already knew this info and are trying to help Ellie correct her speech and drink more fluids.

The interesting part of the meeting was when we saw Dr. Saal. She has seen Dr. Saal several times before, but it has been a couple of years. He is the director of genetics at Children's. We saw him the first year we brought her home. He did testing, didn't find any abnormalities with standard testing and decided not to pursue any additional expensive testing for now. After seeing her, he was still concerned about the size of her head and the structure of her face. He ordered a more extensive chromosomal study done and then asked me to come back to either him or 2 other geneticists that he recommended in St. Louis in the next 6-9 months. He would like her evaluated by the craniofacial team. Click here to learn more about Dr. Saal. I think he's concerned that her face shape may be affecting her speech. Her jaw is too far forward, etc. I didn't think to ask a timetable on this however...I knew she needed surgery but I thought they would wait until after her jaw was done growing to do this...

When we get the results of her lab work, I think I will try to call and ask him a few more questions. Ellie heard the word blood work and was ready to hit the road! She did great though and I was so proud of her. The best she has done by far!

Will post more when we have more results...