I realized the other day that I haven’t provided a new blog post in a long time! A few people have been asking how Levi is doing, so I thought that now would be a good time to give you a little update.
Levi is such a little trooper, and we’ve been so proud of how well he’s been doing. It’s been almost a year since his surgery, and everyone has been very happy with how well it has healed, which has been encouraging to hear. There is still a very small fistula (hole) in the roof of his mouth, but this opening has actually shrunk quite a bit from a few months ago. Depending on how the fistula reacts to the development of the tissues on the roof of his mouth, the surgeon may or may not have to perform another small operation to close that up. We have a follow up appointment with his surgeon in June to see how everything is looking. In the meantime, the fistula doesn’t seem to affect him too much. It may still decrease his ability to suck efficiently, so we haven’t tried a straw with him, but I don’t think that it’s too serious that he’s missing out on that skill right now.
One of the biggest things that he is dealing with right now is a combination of hearing tests and speech development. When Levi had his initial lip repair, they also did a small surgery to put tubes in his ears. Often cleft palate kids have trouble with fluid in their ears, since there is an opening in the palate that shouldn’t be there. These tubes fell out just last month, which was what we expected. However, right around the time they fell out he also caught RSV (a respiratory virus) which then developed into a bacterial infection. It was unfortunate timing, and along with a lot of coughing, there was also a lot of snot. Yuck. He was placed on antibiotics, and is perfectly fine now, but since his tubes were no longer in place and there was so much fluid, a lot of it wasn’t able to drain properly. He had his hearing tested on Wednesday this week, and the audiologist determined that his ability to hear has decreased substantially. He recommended that Levi go for another surgery to get a second set of tubes. This will happen in around 6 weeks.
On one hand, it’s a bit discouraging to know that Levi will have to go for yet another surgery in his short little life, and get put under again. But on the other hand, it’s very encouraging to know that this is quite a simple surgery and will help not only his hearing but also his speech development. At this point, because he has had fluid in his ears for quite some time, he hasn’t been able to properly hear sounds or words. We have had several speech therapy appointments, and have gotten lots of tips on how to work with Levi. We have noticed some progress over the past little while… he’s been trying a few new sounds, and definitely understands concepts and instructions. Despite this, he is still a bit behind where he should be in speech development, and we have a ways to go. This surgery will help clear up his hearing and hopefully help catch him up in the speech department. He also can’t hear himself properly, and often is quite loud. This upcoming surgery will hopefully help with that, too!
So that’s where we’re at right now! Thanks to those of you who have been praying for him; we appreciate it. And thanks for reading!
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