MRI results

Great News!! Ellie had a clear MRI today! Dr. Bautti, radiation oncologist, said everything looked great! We were happy and relieved to hear this. He sais we'd do another in four months. So he is stretching it a little more. He said soon we would go to six months apart for the MRIs. Then she got the clearance for surgery on the 14th if she is over her little bit of lasting cough. If she isn't then we need to call them a couple days ahead of time and let them know how she's doing and they'll decide to postpone it or do it. We are trying to get her 100% healthy but it may be hard since Nathan is now coughing and has a runny nose.

For those of you who don't completely understand the upcoming surgery they are doing what is called a 7-12 facial nerve graft. We have a nerve in the neck below our ear that gives us sensation in our earlobe. They are going to cut part of this nerve out and attach one end to her 7th nerve which is her facial nerve and then cut the 12th nerve which is her tongue nerve and splice it in there so it comes out like a branch from that nerve. This will then grow together hopefully and give her tone back in her face. Then maybe after 8 months of recovery she will be able to move her tongue so her mouth moves up into a full smile. This will take practice doing facial exercises but it should work. It's worked on others they have done so we pray it is successful for Ellie also. One thing they learned in past experiences is that it works best if this surgery is done within 2 years of the first surgery. After that nerves tend to die off and "pull back" which makes it hard for healthy attachment. She is only 1 year out of surgery so she should be a prime candidate for this to work. The only little bit of a bummer is it takes a long time to start seeing changes. First she'll start to get tone back in her face then when we notice that she'll have to start practicing trying to move that side of her face. This change could take as much as a year. We are thankful for amazing medical advancements!

Thanks for everyone's support and encouragement through the cancelled surgery and MRI these past two weeks. See yall soon!