Cleft Team Update for Tyson

On June 27th, we went to Seattle to visit the cleft team. Of course, Ty was afraid of every doctor in a white coat due to having his appendix out in May.

The long and short of it, they all said, "Come back in a year."

Audiology/ENT: His hearing is "essentially normal" which means I just have a loud child. We will test again next year.

Speech Therapist: Concerned that some air is exiting the nose, so VPI is a concern. That basically means his soft palate isn't closing off to make certain sounds. But as always...it's so minimal that they aren't sure if it will improve, stay the same, or get better. So we wait a year and see.

Pediatrician: Happy with his growth and progress, no concerns!

Surgeon: No surgeries this year, expecially since he just had his appendix out. So we'll come back next year and decide if we need to do more studies on VPI or do a lip revision. The surgeon thought Ty's speech sounded great, but he also said he trusts the judgment of the therapist since she's trained to hear things that he is not trained to hear.

So that's why this post has taken so long for me to write. Basically, we just wait and see. In the meantime, we are doing speech therapy locally until we run out of our 60 visits, which will be soon. Ty is saying ABCs now, recognizes a few letters, and can write a few. I don't work on it much with him since our focus is still language. In fact, he only qualifies for speech under receptive language! It's amazing...Ty is amazing...God is amazing!

Here are pictures of Ty on his birthday, June 22nd. He is now 4 years old!