Stanford or Bust

Well its been a bit since the last post. We are trapped in that eternal twilight. The days are blending together and picking up speed. Mac is doing well. We are heading to Stanford in the morning for a second and hopefully better opinion. I have no doubt the doctors at Children's Hospital are competent but just. Mac has to live with this repair for the rest of her life, which could be short if she doesn't quit crying so much, so it better be as good as we can provide. From what we hear Stanford has a dedicated clinic for cleft repair. I will post the results tomorrow. On an exciting note my sister, Amber, is here from the U.P. to visit. We have had a great time catching up. She has had fun visiting with Mac and getting a nice California sunburn. You know how those Michigan people are, pasty white and looking for the ocean and movie stars.






The Scott Wimin Folk. Hey get back in the kitchen!

Mustached Mac

We met with the plastic surgeon on Friday. I will admit that this was not pleasant. At this point Mac will need four surgeries spread out from when she turns six months to seventeen or eighteen. The first surgery will be to repair her cleft lip. This will take place when she is six months. Before anyone asks yes, they can perform it earlier but the doctors prefer to wait. Mac is breast feeding sucksessfully (joke)so, there is no medical reason to rush into the surgery. The reason it is usually done early is the parents want it fixed, damn the risk. The second surgery will be to accomplish cosmetic "touch up" right before she starts school. The third surgery will be performed when she has her adult teeth coming in, around nine-ish, this will repair the cleft in her gum-line. They will harvest bone from her hip and implant it into her gum-line. The last surgery will be when she is an adult and this will be to rhinoplasty to set up her nose. The upside to all of this is her soft and hard palettes are intact. She will avoid additional and more intrusive surgery. Now to the downside and reason for the post title, at least the hardest part for Camille and I, we have to tape her lip together. Logically it makes sense, in just one week we noticed her cleft lip growing further apart but, in practice it is terrible to see. We just remind ourselves that Mac doesn't know any better. My hillbilly fabricator brain looks at this and is sure there is a better way. Any of you that work in the medical field I have some questions about available materials so, please contact me at dadofmac@gmail.com.

Tired, so here are some pics