First Surgery (Lip Repair)

When we were first told that Reis would have his first surgery in November, it seemed like that was a long time away and that it would be forever until then. Well, November got here faster then I could even believe.

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009, we woke up knowing that we would be heading to Overland Park, KS to get prepared for the surgery that would take place around 7:30 am the next day.

With our truck loaded up with all of our bags and everything we might need for the next few days, we hit the road and headed for my brothers house in Olathe. Troy decided that he would leave the same time as us and would just follow us down there since he wasn't as familiar with the area as I was. The trip out seemed to go by rather quickly. Reis did real good all the way out there, as he slept from Smith Center to Salina, where we stopped for lunch at Long John Silvers and he was awake for around 30 minutes or so then we hit the road for the rest of the trip and he fell back asleep. When we arrived at the Motel 8 that Troy was staying in, Reis decided to wake up and eat finally after not eating for 5 and a half hours.

That night we had made plans to go out to eat at Texas Roadhouse in Olathe near Eric's house. Louise and Darrell, Dave and Trish, Eric and Becca, Troy, Merry, Tasha, Reis and I all went. After supper, Eric, Becca, Merry, Tasha, Reis and I all went back to Eric's to crash for the evening since we had to be up fairly early to get to the hospital.

Reis was supposed to eat his last meal until after his surgery around 3:30 am on Thursday morning, however, when I woke him up to feed him his bottle, he wasn't hungry and only ended up eating about 2 ounces, which was about 4 less than he normally eats. Since he wasn't eating, I put him back to bed and laid down for a few more hours of sleep. Around 4:30, Tasha woke up to start getting ready while I slept a little longer. Around 5 o'clock she came out of the bathroom and woke me telling me she had blown the breaker to the basement so I went to switch it back on. Since I was up at this point I just decided to get ready as well. My mom was upstairs getting ready so she could follow us to the hospital.

It was around 6:00 when we left my brothers house and headed for Children's Mercy South in Overland Park. We arrived around 6:20 and got unloaded and checked in with the security and they directed us to the Surgery department where we had to get registered. Around 6:40 a nurse came out to the waiting room and called Reis' name.  Tasha and I went back to the prep room where we would have to be for the next hour with him while they Surgery team prepared him for the surgery.

When we got to our room, the nurse gave us a little green hospital gown and some little yellow no-slip socks that we had to dress him in. We got him dressed in his gown and socks and then we had to go to a different room to take his vitals, weight and measurement.  This is sort of where things started to go downhill.  Once we got in the room to do vitals, Reis started to get a little cranky.  We were able to get his weight and height, but then the nurse tried to get his blood pressure and nothing seemed to work.  As she was trying to get his blood pressure he was sitting on Tasha's lap and decided it was time for a morning bathroom break.  The nurse started to freak out because he poop was pouring out onto the floor and nearly made a mess all over Tasha's jeans.  After we got his diaper changed and cleaned up all the poop that was on the floor, we headed back to our room to finish filling out our pre-opt questions and to meet with the other doctors.  After we filled out everything and talked to the anesthesiologist, Reis decided he was going to be cranky and started balling which lead to a whole lot of emotional stress from both Tasha and I.  We finally gave in and gave him his pacifier to calm him down enough until they were ready for him.

The nurse finally came in and told us that they were ready for him.  It wasn't easy for Tasha and I to see him leave with the nurses on his little gurney, but we both knew that it would soon be over and it was all for the best...

To Be Continued...

Fast Forward

Well, Since I didn't think to start this blog until recently, and Reis is now just over 4 months old, I figured I would fast forward through the last couple of months and bring everyone up to speed.

Within the first few of months of Reis' life, we have already made several trips to Kansas City.  During these trips, we met with the team of people that would be doing his surgeries as well as the ENT, Audiologist, Nutritionist and other people that will be following his progress as he grows and gets older.

We have made several trips to Fales Pediatric Dentistry to get his palatal expander fitted, and to have a few more checkups to see how much further it could expand and then finally our last appointment with them, Dr. Fales told us we could stop expanding as it was out as far as it would go.

During the past 3 months, things have been basically normal, with the exception of the frequent trips to Kansas City.  We have had some issues with ear infections, but other then that, everything has been fairly normal.  We have been to the lake, been to Wichita to see my dad and step mom who live down there a couple of times and even been out of town shopping like normal since we have had Reis.

On September 12th, 2009, Joe and Darla Conaway, with the help of some others held a benefit for Reis at Pooches in Smith Center.  They had a 70's costume party with all of the proceeds from the door entry going to an account that we had setup at the Peoples Bank.  This benefit went very well, and we raised quite a bit of money to go into the account that we had setup.  We have decided to use this money exclusively for travel, food and lodge (when needed).

Reis is scheduled to have his lip repair surgery this week, November 5th, 2009 at 6:30am and as you would probably assume, we are very nervous about how it is all going to play out.  We are confident that Dr. Singhal will do a wonderful job with it and we don't expect that when he is done on Thursday, everything will be hunky dory, but we know it is all going to work itself out in the end.  Our biggest concern is giving up our little man for the 4 hour or longer surgery.  Once the surgery is over, I will be sure to post more pictures and if time allows, I will post another segment on how everything went, so please stay tuned and thanks so much for keeping us in your thoughts.

First Trip to KC

Our first trip to KC was about a week and a half after we got home from Salina.  July 9th, 2009 Tasha, Reis and I along with Louise (Tasha's Mom) and Merry (my Mom) headed for Kansas City.  We had made plans with the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) to stay there since we really didn't know what to expect when we got out there.  His first appointment was scheduled for the next day at 8:00 am.  We arrived at the RMH and got checked in.  The RMH was very accommodating, we had to fill out some papers, and make a small donation to stay and then they showed us to our room.

Later that evening, we met up with Eric and Becca down at the plaza to go out for supper.  We had decided on Buca di Beppo for supper with a followup cheese cake from the Cheese Cake factory for the ladies that wanted it.  It was Reis' first real experience at a restaurant, which he seemed to do fairly well.

When we finished eating, we walked around for awhile enjoying the plaza for the night.  We headed over to the fountains and took a few more pictures and the gals decided that it was time to go get their cheese cake, though I don't know how anyone would be hungry after the feast that we had at Buca.  After stopping at the Cheese Cake Factory, we decided we had better get headed back to the RMH so we could hit the sack and be ready for the next morning.

The next morning came and we all hurried around to get over to the hospital, which was just across the street.  This proved to be a little bit harder than any of us had thought.  We ended up walking pretty much all the way around the hospital on the wrong side, and then ended up going into the ER door because we were pushing time as it was and didn't want to be late.  It took us a good 30 minutes to get from the RMH to the correct floor where he would have his first clinic. The clinic was setup a little like, first come, first serve.  We had to check in at the front desk and wait for them to call us.  After about 30 minutes of waiting or so, a nurse called our names and we followed her down to a lower floor where we were set to see the surgeon.  We then waited a few minutes in that waiting room and were called back to weigh and measure Reis.  It was all really kind of confusing for us and several nurses came in and back out.  We first talked with Amanda, the nurse practitioner, then with Beth and Margie who are the surgeon's nurses.  They asked all kinds of questions and asked us if we had questions, which we did, but at the time couldn't remember what all to ask.  Finally we got to meet Dr. Singhal, the plastic surgeon that would be working on Reis.  He is a very nice man, very quite spoken.  He held Reis for a minute or two and looked him over and asked us if we had questions.  We asked several questions about how many surgeries Reis would have to have and about eating and everything else that we could think of and he was pretty straight forward with us.  He told Beth to contact Dr. Fales, a pediatric dentist in Olathe, KS, to see if we could see him that same day since we lived so far away.  Dr. Fales makes the appliance that we would get for Reis to act as a temporary palate.  This device was called a palatal expander, and is designed to re-shape the palate and bring the premaxilla forward for better results when they do the surgeries.  When we were done with the questions he told us that he would see us again in a few months for his pre-operation appointment.  Beth and Margie then showed us how to do the Lip Taping that we would have to do for the next 4 months.  The lip taping seemed pretty easy and once you got the hang of it, it was pretty easy.  Beth had contacted Dr. Fales and they were going to see us around 2:00 that day.

When we were finished seeing the surgeon, we headed back up to the clinic waiting room to wait to see the audiologist and the nutritionist.  After another small wait in the clinic, we were invited back to a room where we met the nutritionist.  She asked several questions about how his feeding was going and we let her know that the feeding was going pretty well.  We finished talking to the nutritionist and she called in the audiologist.  The audiologist did a couple of hearing test, and then decided that he needed an ABR (Auditory Brainstem Respons).  This test seem to take forever.  They hooked several wires up to Reis and she had her laptop recording what his brain was sending back through to the computer.  After what seemed like hours, but really only about 1 hour, the test was finished.  The results were pretty much what we had expected to hear since he had failed his other test.  She said that he had some slight hearing loss in his left ear but was ok in his right ear.  The loss in his left ear might be from the fluid that was in his middle ear and she told us she wanted to do another test at some point when we were back out for something else.  As the test was finishing up, the 2 moms headed back over to the RMH to get everything packed up since it was getting close to 1:00 and we were supposed to be in Olathe by 2:00.

We finished up at the clinic and hurried back over to the RMH to help get everything packed up and then we took off towards Olathe to go see Dr. Fales.  We arrived right around 2:00 at Dr. Fales' clinic and they were there waiting for us.  It was kind of nice, because they weren't really open because he normally does his surgery on Friday, but since we lived so far away, they agreed to see us to get Reis fitted for his expander.  Dr. Fales and Konnie, the practice administrator were very nice and happy to see us and to meet Reis.  They had us keep Reis in his car seat and they got ready to create a mold of his mouth, which was very painful looking but didn't last long and surprisingly was perfect on the first try.  They finished that up and let us know that we would need to come out about a week later to pick it up.

After leaving Dr. Fales', we were all starved by that time since we hadn't ate anything, so we decided to grab a quick bite.  After lunch, we did some other shopping and then headed for home.

Tasha's Hospital Revisit

Since this Blog is about Reis, I won't go into too much detail here, but I thought that it was a big part of what happened in Reis' life so I had better make note of it...

Just as we thought everything was getting better and our lives were getting back to normal, Tasha was put into the hospital two days after we got back from Salina.  At first, we were not sure what the heck was going on with her, but it was thought to be an infection of some kind.  Due to the amount of blood that she lost and everything else that went on the previous 5 days, she ended up with UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) on top of her hemoglobin level being very low.  They put her on IV meds and pumped her full of liquids to try and bring her hemoglobin back up to normal.  I don't remember exactly where it was, but I know it was too the point that she was very weak and ghostly white at times.  We spent most of the first week of Reis' life in Hospitals and this was weighing very heavy on both of us.

Just when we were thinking we were going to have to get a permanent room at the hospital, Tasha started to come around, and just in time since the 4th of July was only a day away.  Tasha was released on the Third and we were able to enjoy the celebration with the rest of the family.