Finishing and Starting

Wow, it's been too long.  Truth is, we lost momentum.  I crashed and burned after an insane 12 months.  I'm in the recovery phase, but after my own autism diagnosis, it's a long, slow process of discovering just exactly what I can expect of myself reasonably.

Tomorrow will be 1 year from the day that Corbin had his "big surgery."  We were very quiet at that time because we had foster children that we couldn't talk about publicly, but last March Corbin spent a week at Children's Mercy because of a flare up of his dacryocystitis and had the 4th & 5th surgeries of his short life. The 5th was the DCR where the surgeon removed his tear ductwork and replaced it with plastic tubing because it kept clogging and creating a fluid filled cyst.  The disorder is called dacryocystitis.  He had a very advanced case for someone his age and they typically don't like to do surgery on children of his age, but after 3 probes, 3 sets of tubes, a balloon catheter procedure and a small incision to reduce pressure, it was long past time for the DCR.

We have seen the surgeon every 3 months since the surgery for updates and to check the growth of the tear duct and today he said it is officially time to schedule the surgery to remove the plastic!  If he were an adult they would undo his sutures (in his nose) and remove it in the office, but since he is a wiggly, easily traumatized little dude, they will have to put him under for a go in the same day surgery.

Risks are minimal for this surgery and he will recover quickly, but we learned something new today:

Corbin's dacryocystitis was NOT caused by a congenital defect and he will be at risk for reoccurrence for the rest of his life.  The surgeon said it's most often brought on by allergic rhinitis.  Corbin had so many respiratory issues when he was little that it makes sense to me.  We just hope and pray this won't be an issue again for him.

So in one way, we are finally closing a chapter in the string of insanity for our family with Corbin's 6th, (and hopefully final!) surgery in 3.5 years.

We are opening a new chapter by starting an application for an Autism Assistance Dog for Violet.  This can take about 12 months.  By then we don't really know where we will be, but the good thing about a trained service dog will be that we never have to leave him/her behind.  Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, we will be able to take Violet's service dog anywhere, even pet free apartments.  We have researched the benefits and feel that Violet will really do well with a service dog.  I'll announce the name of the organization once our application is approved.

Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement.  We are doing a lot of family maintenance right now while Allan is away and when  he comes home it looks like we'll be headed back to NY state for a while.  I will try to be better about checking in.