After the physician assessed him she said she was quite pleased with how the swelling under his jaw had receded. She felt that returning to our original plan of surgery in late spring or summer was reasonable. She felt, however, that the overall distribution of the hygroma was changing. This isn't necessarily good or bad, it's just the nature of how this particular condition works.
We decided to go forward with the scope so that we would have another data point for comparison and to find out what's going on with his voice box and vocal cords. The scope is a quick procedure done in the office that involves no sedation and it makes Sutton really angry. Who wants to have a camera shoved up their nose and into their throat? Little guy didn't know what was coming.
What she found was both vocal cords moving! At one point he only had one vocal cord that appeared to be functional as a result of compression from the hygroma, so we are very excited about this! His voice box is still rotated and, while both cords are functional, there is little space for them. Ideally - remember, we are praying for ideal - the surgical resection would allow pressure relief and, in turn, his voice box would rotate to its proper position and there would be minimal or no compression on his vocal cords.
We also discussed how many surgeries we could be looking at in the future. After our last appointment Kedric and I got to talking about what we understood the next several years might look like. He had recalled the physicians telling us in our first few days in the NICU that we would likely have numerous surgeries throughout Sutton's childhood. My memory is much different. The chaos of the surprise of Sutton's condition coupled with my extreme fatigue from laboring through the night and being discharged from the hospital 6 hours after giving birth to travel to St. Louis resulted in me missing a lot of the information being thrown at us. It took me more than a week to remember what the condition was called! His ENT, at this visit, gave us a quick refresher. She said numerous surgeries are possible because of the dynamic nature of hygromas, but they aren't guaranteed. She also said it is possible that he could have no surgeries.
Now folks, we're not holding our breath for the latter possibility. But it is possible. We're still fully prepared for surgery to happen in a few months. But we're excited that there is even a possibility (no matter how small) that he may not have to have any surgery at all.
Gladly...until next month.
