Time for a Post

It's not that yesterday's news was bad news, it just wasn't what we wanted to hear. After months and months of dealing with trying to come to a close to Karsie's defect we have to wait more. Dr. Gossman came in and looked at Karsie's flanks. Karsie has grown a lot since Dr. Gossman saw her last, and she has a good front to work with, but the sides that the tissue expanders will go has not grown as much as would be ideal. Gossman measured the space between Karsie's hip bone and rib cage, where the expanders would go. If you measure yours it really isn't that much, maybe a few inches. Karsie's is about an inch and a half.

Gossman did say that the decision is negotiable, and it's possible to do it. However, the surgery and procedure is painful, and it's possible that if we started it now, the expanders would not really do anything anyway since there's not a lot of room for them to go. In other words, we might be putting Karsie through a lot of pain and not a lot of gain. She advised that we wait another 6 months and then reassess. We figure if it's negotiable now, then Karsie should be good to go in April.

An added bonus to the waiting is that we were able to schedule the next appointment during vacation. Also, the surgery is looking like it will happen the first week we are off for summer vacation.

We also had a feeding appointment. Karsie has just been a NO on eating. Everything else has been progressing at an amazing rate, but eating has not. In fact, Dr. Gossman, Karsie's plastic surgeon, is concerned with the lack of eating as well because as soon as Karsie gets her expanders, she will most likely have a setback in eating. With her not eating at all, it could spell a huge setback on her progress for many months to possibly years.

The good news with Karsie's eating is that she loves to taste food (and everything else for that matter), so it's not unthinkable that she could start eating more and more in a short period of time. What needs to happen is that she associates swallowing food with good feelings. That's what we are going to focus our attention on in the coming weeks and months. We've got until April.