Appointment at Cleft Lip Clinic

Coral had her appointment yesterday.  She was seen by about 10 doctors.  It was very well organized and someone was with the entire time.  She has normal hearing, so we now know that she is just choosing not to listen to us..LOL.  Seriously, she is fine. She will continue to be monitored on a yearly to bi-yearly basis.  The orthodontist said  she is going to probably need is braces.  The plastic surgeon said that her lip looked great and that she would not need any further surgery.  The ENT doctor said for us to consider a larynsocopy (sp) to check her throat to see if there is anything on her vocal cords to cause her to have a raspy voice.  He doesn't really think there is and that the raspiness is caused by vocal strain.  She could have had to cry or scream a lot in the orphanage to get attention to get her needs met.  We also found out that her type of cleft, which is a midline cleft is a very rare cleft.  I believe it's like something like 1 in 10,000.  This type of cleft can also affect other midline defects. This refers to such things as the heart, brain.  The cleft and other midline effects are not related per se, but they may have occurred at the same time in the baby's gestation.  That is to say that if something affected the formation of the face that something could have affected these other parts.  The doctors do not see any red flags because she is developmentally where she needs to be and she does not have any heart murmurs or seizures.  I repeat, the doctors are not really concerned about her having any problems in this area.  We are going to have an MRI done just as a precautionary measure.  Again, the doctors really do not think there is any problem.  So, we're going to do those this summer.  We were really pleased that everything went so well and that she is fine.