Well, here it is almost the end of April and I finally have info to give. Our good news is that Nate's orthodontist back in March thought Nate was borderline for even needing the jaw surgery anymore. His teeth had moved in a way that wasn't expected early on, I guess. So he was put in rubber bands for 5 weeks and went to the orthodontist yesterday and things are looking really good. Yay! He is still in rubber bands, but they are in a different configuration to fine tune everything. (He wasn't a happy camper last night.... ouch!) He doesn't have an estimate of how soon the braces can come off, but it looks like no jaw surgery will be needed (99% sure).
We are however, trading a jaw surgery for an eye surgery. But it's a good trade. So as you have read before, Nate tried the vision therapy since he really had no idea what to do. Well, it turns out that if you talk to any other ophthalmologist they aren't very happy he did that. Not that it hurt anything, but that it has no medical proof of working. So basically we wasted a lot of money on hocus pocus.... in a sense. Now we are educated. I'm sure it has its place, but for Nate's problem it didn't do anything. Time is the real healer. We discovered that he has a certain eye muscle that was either paralyzed, scarred or most likely a combination of both that can be fixed. At least, surgery will give Nate a significant improvement with that eye, that's the goal anyway. There's always risk involved. It might not work, but the doctor seemed confident in it and even took Nate's case to his international peers to see what expert advice they had. His surgery is on May 18th and the down time a about one day. He said it might feel like there's dirt in his eye for a couple days, but that's about it. We should have gone to this doctor months ago. Oh well. Live and learn.
Is that it? Nate's knee has healed well. He's about ready to start playing sports again. He's happy about that. I guess that's it, for now. It's been a year (almost) of recovery, but we also know, as we did before, that it could have been a whole lot worse and we know others struggle with more than we have. We don't want anyone to think this is a "feel sorry for us" type of thing. I know you probably don't think that, but I just wanted to make sure. ;) I'm hoping in about a month I can sign off and say that is it..... we are done.... that will be nice. Until then, I hope you all are well and thank you again for your love and support through Nate's recovery. We couldn't ask for more.
(Originally posted on Nate's Carepage)
1 comment:
I think it's great you are keeping as all updated on his progress. I'm amazed at all that happened and how far he has healed. I know it hasn't been easy for him or you at times but so many miracles and blessings have come from all this.
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