A Mother's Love...

With tomorrow being mother's day and then soon all three of our adopted children's birthdays, I think about each of their mothers.  I am grateful to them for choosing to have these babies and giving them the opportunity to live.  My heart breaks for them and the choice they had to make and the heartache they must feel as the birthdays near.  I cannot imagine the "weight" they carry.


My prayer for these mothers: 
I pray for them to have peace, that they would know deep down in their soul that their children are cared for and loved.  I pray for them to have strength because they did what they knew they had to do for these children to have a good life.  I pray for them to have hope, that they would come to know Christ and feel his presence among them.  My heavenly Father, I pray your hand upon them as I pray these things for them - Amen!


I dedicate this poem to Angel's, Tegan's and Corban's birth mothers.  I made a few changes (original words are in parenthesis), to read as if I were reading it to our children: 

Your (My) Birth Mom

© Emily E. Adkisson

Loving and gracious the
Women I've never met.
She made a difficult decision and
She will debate that decision for the
Rest of her life.
It was something she knew she had to do
She did it with
A Mothers Love.

She thinks about you (me) everyday
Every birthday, Every Mothers Day
Hurt will always be there.
You (I) would not be the person
You are (I am) today without
A Mothers Love.

I can never thank her enough
For all the pain
She must go through
To give you (me) a wonderful life
She had to show the biggest amount of
A Mothers Love.

Source: My Birth Mom, A Mother's Love, Adoption Poem http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/my-birth-mom-a-mothers-love#ixzz1ugZzTxue 
www.FamilyFriendPoems.com 

7 Weeks post Grafts

I know I'm a little slow on the blog, my intentions are good but life with 6 kids keeps me going and easily distracted.

The boys have healed well.  I removed all of Tegan's scalp stitches on my own - impressively he sat pretty well for it.  Thankfully it didn't take long to do.

Corban's on the other hand were a different story.  At two weeks out, which is how long they wanted us to wait, many of his stitches were starting to be embedded in the skin. Thankfully a retired nurse from our church offered to assist in removing them.  Good thing because it was not an easy task and took about an hour to get them all out with his squirming and all.  She had brought along some homemade chocolate chip cookies, Corban didn't want anything to do with them.  He was just ready to be left alone.

As of today, we are still wrapping Corban in an ace wrap. A nice chunk of the graft (about 3" long and 1 inch wide") died on the lower left side and supposedly the compression of the wrap along with the cortisone we've been putting on it, for the past 3 weeks, will help it heal faster.  I can finally say that in the past week, we have finally seen improvement.

Tegan has healed really well, thankfully no issues with him.  We had plenty of that before this last surgery.

Here is what Corban's incisions looked like April 1st, you can see on his left side (the right picture) the start of a hole in the corner of the flap.

Here is what the incisions looked like 8 days after the above photos:

Here is what it looks like as of  earlier this week :

                            

I hope this will be the last week we have to wrap him with it warming up. He can get quite hot with all that extra cloth on him.

We have set dates for their next set of expanders, that will happen on September 28th.  Then they will be removed  on December 21st. We do know that Tegan will not get an expander placed in his next this next time, Dr B wants to wait till next year to try the neck again.  Wants to give it plenty of healing time.  I'm not a huge fan that he has to sport then not so pretty scar for that long but I know doc knows what he's doing.  

I know many will think we are crazy doing it so close to the holiday but we don't want them missing too much preschool due to the multiple 2 week recoveries so we are utilizing Christmas break and I'll have extra hands to help entertain them.

Amazing surgery results...

Monday's surgeries were a  big success.  Corban's surgery began shortly after 7:30am and he came out around 10:15am.  Tegan went back about 10:45am and came out around 1:30pm.  Both came out of anesthesia easier than last time.  Corban couldn't sit still in his bed by dinner time and ate a decent dinner.  Tegan, on the other hand, was still not interested in food till about 9pm but they were able to give him oral pain meds and he kept them down, so that is a huge change from last time. 

Dr B was able to remove a nice portion of Corban's back Nevus, down to just below the waistline. And it's amazing how different Corban looks without the cute spot in the middle of his forehead - makes me miss it already. Check out the before and after of this back: 

And without the spot on his forehead:

Dr Bauer did some amazingly, creative work on Tegan.  Tegan's left eyebrow was enveloped with Nevus.  I had briefly wondered what should be done with it, completely remove it, leaving him with no eyebrow or leave the eyebrow with the Nevus under it.  Who knew there was a third option, well Dr B did.  Since Tegan's tissue expander was just above the eyebrow, on his right side, Dr Bauer made the incision in the middle of his right eyebrow (taking it down the middle, the long way) and shifted it over to make him a new left eyebrow - how amazingly, creative is that? I had never even thought of that as a possibility.  God gave Tegan deep eyebrows for a reason!!! I can't wait till everything is healed so it can better be seen.  We are completely amazed and grateful for Dr Bauer and his expertize. Without further ado here is Tegan, before and after:

Wow, look how much he has "grown up" in the past 3 months. The "before" pic was taken in December. He has gone from "baby face" to big boy. 



 We have many stitches that we will have to take out next week.  All of Corban's and some of Tegan's.  Once again, I am thankful for nurses, who go to our church, that are willing to assist us! So appreciative that God know just who to put in our lives.

Expander removal on Monday...

Quick catch up on the past week.  As of the last post, Tegan's expander was beginning to show. By Monday morning, last week, his expander was ready to come out.  With the help of a friend, who is a nurse, the expander was removed. I am so very thankful for her assistance because I'm really not sure I could have done it.  I was also glad I was able to hold and do my best to comfort Tegan during this. I don't think it hurt but probably caused him some discomfort, on top of being scared.  So glad that is over with. Tegan has not been in any pain or discomfort in his neck, since.

This evening, we did the final fills on the boys expanders.  Unfortunately, I won't get any new pictures posted but wanted to post the final fill numbers for those who have been following along, wondering just how full we got them.

We got Tegan's forehead expander filled to 197, our goal was 250. The back of his head we got to 375, our goal was 350 (yay!!!!).

Corban's forehead expander is at 80, our goal was 70 (yay!!!). His left back expander we got to 795 and right back expander to 783, our goal was 700 (YAY YAY YAY).

This coming Monday morning, the boys will each go in for surgery.  Corban is scheduled for 7:30am, we are supposed to be at the hospital at 6am (I'll shoot for 6:30, he's the first surgery, not like we're going to go in any earlier). Tegan is scheduled for 10:40am, he is supposed to be there by 9:15am.  I presume Corban's surgery is projected to take close to 3 hours. I am not sure how long Tegan is scheduled for, probably close to 3 as well. The boys will spend the night in the hospital and we will head home on Tuesday.

Please pray that all goes smoothly.

If you can stomach it - visable bag..

His expander is much more visible today.  I have tied a stretchy gauze around his neck to help support the weight for now.  As you can see, there is only on small piece of skin holding the gap closed.  I don't think it will hold for long. Keeping a close eye on it. Ready to get it out so we can stop worrying about it and he can have full range of movement with his head, once again. 

Will it fall out tomorrow - very likely...

His fragile skin has not been able to withstand the weight of the expander and the skin began to separate in the three weakest places today.  It went from no apparent separation to larger than expected gaps, overnight.  From the looks of it, we will be lucky of the expander doesn't "fall out" tomorrow. 

I am not looking forward to this.  It was hard enough removing the Tegaderm tape, this evening, to clean up the seeping that has come from the openings.  Seeing the expander peeking through just made my heart sink.  I cried right along with Tegan as I slowly peeled the Tegaderm off. It broke my heart that he, we are going through this. 

But with God by our side, we will make it through.  He will heal and we will restart the process again this fall.

Below is a picture of what the area looks like tonight.  It is not for the faint of hearts so if you get queasy, easily, don't look.

The red areas is where the expander is showing through.  As you can see, there is only a small piece of skin left, holding it in. Lord, please grant me the strength to face dealing with this when it is time to remove the expander. This has been the hardest thing to face in this entire, crazy, journey.

Falling expandering in our future? Time will tell....

In keeping it real with the eventful expander journey we've had with Tegan, here is an update.  I emailed Dr B this picture last night stating that I thought a blood vessel had broke open as it appears he has a "blood" bruise.  The email I got back this morning was not the response I was expecting.  He basically stated that the skin is continuing to break down and that he expect it will eventually begin to split open, exposing the expander. GULP.  I contacted his wonderful nurse, Mim, this morning to get a crash course on what to do if this should happen.  She said worse case scenario is it splits to the point that the Tegaderm tape we have on it will not support it and we will remove the expander (or it'll fall out).  If so, we are to gause the area up and wait till surgery time. Since the tissue will have to be removed, it is not usable, it's not an urgent matter.  10 more days till expander removal, hope we can make it without the expander falling out.  Ugh.

There will be no progress made from this expander, they will cut out the dead/dying tissues and sew his neck back up.  We will let him heal for several months and have to give it another go this fall. How disappointing is that?