Cecelia, Amanda, one of my students, and I went to Boston last Monday and Tuesday and met with a speech pathologist and Cecelia's surgeon...the surprise for us was the decision to hold off the next surgery for at least a year...Cecelia's receptive language(that which she understands) is at about 4-5 years while her expressive language is at about 2 years old, this being a combination of her clefting and the fact that she only heard Mandarin for almost two years...Both the pathologist and the surgeon were happy with her progress so far...the bad side of no surgery is that her fistula(hole in the palate) does cause her to lose enough air that she won't be able to say any "plosive" sounds till it is repaired...however, they both feel that her palate tissue is still too sensitive and new from the prior surgeries and that she could run the risk of losing tissue altogether, which we obviously don't want...they also felt that given the fact that she won't be attending school(where she could be made fun of) and also that she is the size of an 18-24 month old, she can get away with speech issues for a long while yet...
so now we are happy to have a leisurely summer to look forward to and to the fact that next summer, at age 4 1/2, her next surgery should be much easier to explain...
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