Monday, January 14, 2008

Follow-Up


We saw the cranial-facial plastic surgeon this afternoon. He is very happy with the way Nolan is healing and how the surgery went. He said on a scale of 1 to 10, he puts Nolan's outcome at a 9.5. He still has a lot of swelling around his eyes and forward and that can take months to completely disappear.

Nolan still will not sleep in his crib, but we keep trying every night. Hopefully one of these nights it will click. He is playing a little more without having to have me by his side, so that is a step in the right direction. We do have to watch him carefully since his soft spot is much larger now.

We are taking him off the codeine completely. It is really messing with his stomach and I think it is causing more harm than good at this point. Dr. Papay said when he does this surgery in third world countries (he goes on lots of these surgical trips) they only ever give the kids regular tylenol. I can't imagine that because without morphine I would not have made it through the first two days, let alone Nolan!

We spoke with the doctor about Nolan's eye. I'm sure you've noticed that sometimes one eye appears to cross. It is an effect of the metopic craniosynostosis causing pressure on the optic nerve. The surgery did not (and should not have) corrected the problem so we need to explore this now. Best case would be a patch over the strong eye; worst case would be surgery. We have an appointment on Thursday. Poor kid, as if he has not been through enough already. Then there is the bracial cleft cyst on his neck that needs removed when he hits a year old, but that is in the very back of my mind at the moment.


Miss Reagan is starting to get on all 4's and hop forward. Still no attempt at a crawl, but then again I think she may skip crawling and go straight to running! Notice that mischievous smirk! We are going to have our hands full with her :-)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have checked in here faithfully and glad to see he is coming around. Do you think the codeine might have something to do with the way he is acting. I love the picture of Reagan, just looking to find some trouble to get into.

Glad to see things are looking up.

Sandy (momto3over3)

Shelley said...

Sandy-
YES! I think the codeine has something to do with the way he is acting. It makes him extremely gassy and I'm sure his belly is hurting so he doesn't want to eat as much. He hasn't had any since last night so I'm hoping things will start to get back to normal soon.
Thanks for checking in!

Shelley

Unknown said...

hi
thanks for keeping us up to date!
Love ya!

Anonymous said...

I'm so happy he is getting back to normal ... takes a bit!

Watch out for that Reagan ... she may be another Zoe!!

Love to All!

Cat