Welcome Back!

For those that followed our journey to Peter, welcome back!

Although I am not a fan of blogging, it seems to be the easiest way to keep family and friends updated about Peter's progress. After finally settling into our new home, we began the daunting task of researching our options for Peter's ears and after much prayer we have decided on a plan. Along with these big decisions, come many questions and misconceptions. Now you can follow along here to see how Peter is doing.

A little background...all of you know Peter has a condition called bilateral microtia / atresia. He was born without a middle or outer ear. His inner ear functions normally...the challenge is gaining access to the inner ear. Currently, Peter wears bilateral bone conduction hearing aids and his hearing is in the normal range with his aids. Without aids, he is hearing between 60 and 80 decibels (normal speech sounds are heard generally between 10 and 45 decibels) so although Peter CAN hear us without aids, he was not able to hear well enough establish any speech before he joined our family. Now, after being aided and understanding English...it is easier for him to pick up on what we are saying when he is not wearing his aids.

There are 3 options for us with regard to reconstruction for Peters ears. In addition to reconstruction, we needed to find out if he was a candidate for atresia repair. Atresia repair is simply making an ear canal, ear drum and getting his ossicle bones (the 3 small bones in the middle ear that transmit sound from the air to the cochlea) working properly to restore his hearing without needing his hearing aids. After getting a CT scan done on Peter's ears, it was determined that his left ear was a good candidate for repair and the right ear was 'less favorable' due the the placement of the facial nerve on that side. It seems the facial nerve is blocking the area where they need to do the repair, so we are still uncertain about the right.

We sent a copy of Peter's CT scan to a specialist in California for a 2nd opinion. Once we hear back from him, we will decide what to do on the right side. 

As far as building new ears for him...we had 3 options to choose from...1. a prosthetic ear which can be glued or screwed on. 2. Rib Graft reconstruction where they take cartilage from the rib cage to sculpt an ear (this is extensive and requires about 7-8 surgeries before it's all said and done...not to mention the surgery for the atresia repair after reconstruction). 3. Medpor ears, which is an implant made of porous material. While all 3 options have advantages and disadvantages, we felt without a doubt Medpor was the best thing for Peter and our family.

You can find out about Medpor and the surgery at this website: http://www.cedars-sinai.edu/Patients/Programs-and-Services/Microtia/MEDPOR-Reconstruction-for-Microtia.aspx

After making the decision to proceed with Medpor, the first step was scheduling the left atresia repair with our Doctor at U of M who did Samuel's cochlear implant (Dr. T).

That surgery was scheduled for March 23rd. Next, I will post some photos and an update on how the surgery went!