Cleft Clinic

Violet had her first "Cleft Clinic" on Friday. This is where all of the specialties see her the same day (to avoid having multiple appointments on different days). We will go to the full cleft clinic once a year until Violet is 18 years old, unless they feel she doesn't need it at some point, and then she would "graduate" early. The specialty I was most eager to see was audiology to repeat her hearing screen that she failed at birth. I've been really wanting to know just how much she can hear, so I was excited to get this information. Here is our Little Miss having her hearing screen:
Unfortunately, we didn't get the answers after all. Violet needed to stay completely still for 30 minutes for the test to be completed. She just isn't a very heavy sleeper and everytime the audiologist put something in her ear, she stirred, which meant the test had to start over. We tried for about an hour, and then were told we would have to reschedule -- ughh! I'm not sure how we will EVER be successful with this if she really has to remain still for that long. I mentioned something to the plastics nurse about this and she said that sometimes they do the test in the OR. I'm going to pursue this, not only to save us another all-day trip to Children's Mercy, but more importantly to actually get the results. We'll see. . .

Other disciplines at the clinic are:
--social work - we declined seeing
--genetics - not necessary since she was negative on her genetic tests
--speech, dental, ENT - we won't see until the next appointment
--nutrition - they were pleased with her weight gain and increased her feeding amount
--lactation - gave me some data on different pumping supplies to hopefully make it more comfortable to me
--Plastic surgeon - they confirmed the removal surgery date for December 15 (only 9 more days -- yippee!) and completed the history & physical for this. Her blood work was reviewed and Violet got her jaw x-rayed (again) and had an ultrasound of her jaw as well to make sure the abscess was still gone.

It was a long day, but thankfully it's only once a year for the full clinic. We'll follow up with the plastic surgeon much more frequently this first year. In fact, after spending most of the day there, we left with 3 more appointments in the next 3 weeks (infectious disease, plastics, audiology), not even counting the surgery! I'm starting to feel like driving to Children's Mercy for appointments is a full time job! I'm so thankful that we only live an hour away and not 2 or 3 or more.

Here are a couple of pictures I took last evening of our little trooper.