On Our Way Home

We are on our way home. We are very excited to get home and Lauren is happy to see her brother and sister again. (Wow, Lauren just now decided to open up one of the security doors here in the Long Beach Airport and set off the alarm. That was really loud!!) Anyway, we met with Dr. Roberson this morning to remove the bandages. She kept them on throughout the night and seemed to get used to having them on. Surprisingly, they didn't need to put any new bandages to replace them. We thought they may dress it with a smaller bandage, but they just leave it open. The area they took the skin graft from has a bandage stitched in place, but the ear canal is layered with all kinds of packing. The only thing we have to do is place a small piece of cotton ball in the canal and it stays in place. She has not needed any medication for pain all day and she is very energetic. She had no trouble with pressure changes on the flight from San Jose to Long Beach.

We mentioned to Dr. Roberson that she told us several times that she can hear out of her new ear. He said he wouldn't be surprised by it. Although, he said the surgery was quit tricky and her anatomy made it difficult, he was optimistic with the results. Last night, Lauren asked Becky to listen to her new ear. Becky put her ear up to hers and Lauren asked her is she could hear what she was hearing. We told this to Dr. Roberson and like us, I think he teared up a bit. You can tell he really enjoys working with kids and loves what he does. He is amazing. He gave us instructions on how to proceed with her medication and activities for the next few weeks. Next week we will see an E.N.T. doctor in Draper and he will remove the first layer of packing and also the skin graft bandage. Dr. Roberson says that the skin graft area could heal as quickly as one week. In the meantime, we are just to give her some antibiotics and make sure she keeps the new ear canal clean and dry.

Well we hope there are no troubles on the way home. We had some difficulty with our Standby fight out of San Jose. They seemed to have processed our names incorrectly, but they fixed it and we boarded just in time. I don't anticipate any problems from here on out. Hope to see all of you soon.