Thursday, June 18, 2020

New Craniofacial Team

On Tuesday before the car accident we met with part of the craniofacial team at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital through Orlando Health. We saw Dr. Brent Golden, one of the craniomaxillofacial surgeons, and also Tonya, one of the speech therapists on the team. Our purpose was two-fold: 1) to get established as a patient with their team; and 2) to get approval to move forward with a tonsillectomy and adenoid removal for Davis by the team's ENT Dr. Kosko. 

UF Health Shands is no longer on our insurance and after Davis' bone graft surgery we realized it would be impossible to continue treatment there with the way that they bill out of network. There are actually a few other craniofacial teams in Florida that are part of our insurance but we picked this one because of the wonderful care Davis received at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital last year when he had salmonella poisoning. Their doctors were meticulous and the children's units were staffed by amazing folks who were really caring for the whole child. 

Dr. Golden agreed that the tonsils are very enlarged and need to come out (and probably part of the adenoids) and so we will be getting on the schedule soon to set that up. But he and Tonya spent almost a solid hour with us, examining Davis and explaining things about his cleft lip and palate condition we had not previously understood and laying out a course of treatment for the next year as well as an overview for the next several years. Mostly they believe his hyper nasality in speech is not due to the small fistula in his hard palate, but rather a lack of movement in his soft palate muscle at the back of his mouth. We will be doing a full blown speech evaluation with them 6-8 weeks after his tonsillectomy and that will involve a couple of images and tests to examine how the soft palate moves and how much air is coming out of his nose when Davis talks. 

Overall, we feel great about the switch to Arnold Palmer and are looking forward to what they will be able to do for Davis as we move forward in the future. 









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