Can you believe at the age of 3 years my little girl is going to get botox?!?!? After some concern with Maya's increase in secretions and drowling, we discussed the possibility of giving Maya some botox to decrease her secretion production. Her ENT agreed that she would be a great candidate for botox, and that it should help a great deal. Basically, the botox would be injected into her main 4 salivary glands, which would cause the glands to not produce much secretions. The botox would wear off after 4-6 month, but we are very willing to give this a try. In order to do the procedure on Maya (a squirrely 3 year old), he would need to sedate her and do this in the OR. Fortunately, her ENT also needs to do a scope on her to figure out why her sphinkter (sp??) is not opening regularly to allow secretions or food to go down her esophogus. During Maya's swallow study only 2 out of 20 times did Maya's shinkter open to allow food to go down her esophogus. On the other attempts, no matter how hard Maya tried to swallow...AND she did try hard to swallow MOST of the time the shrinkter did not open and when her swallow was complete, she would aspirate ALL her food between swallows. This is not good because she could get pneumonia. SO, we will be having a procedure (day surgery) on the 11th of January to have Maya checked out, scoped, possibly dialate her esophogus (which may be not be functioning well because of scar tissue from previous surgeries), and finally given some botox.
When I scheduled this appointment, a number of the ladies at the front desk were joking about having Maya's ENT give them some of the remaining botox. It is so funny how many people really want to do botox for cosmetic reasons, when I had to really convince Dean that Maya would not look any different appearance wise if she had the botox done...which I thought was pretty cute. Until then, Maya will see her Cardiologist, her Pulmonologist, her nutritionist, her Craniofacial Dr., and have and echocardiogram done on her heart. All of this along with her procedure in January, will give us a good idea of when Maya may need to get her trach out. If she needs heart surgery this summer, there will be a push to get the trach out soon (spring most likely). If not, it will most likely be up to Dean and I, as to when we would like to attempt to take out the trach.
On less of a medical note, we are very excited to be spending the holiday with both sets of parents, and brothers. It is so nice to see family this time of year. Addy is walking a ton, trying to jump even though she cannot get off the ground, learning new words daily, and loving her big sister. Maya will NOT ignore her forever...Addy is convinced! Addy needs to watch Maya get on and off the bus each day, make sure Maya is using the potty chair properly (and checking for any sort of action in the potty), she wants to help feed Maya through her tummy tube, and spends hours putting a syringe into a feeding tube...in and out over and over, when Maya is in her corner reading, Addy is in the dorner playing and occasionally stepping on or sitting on Maya, and when Maya laughs, Addy Laughs, and when Maya coughs, Addy says "ca,ca" with concern, and when Maya cries, Addy will ocasionally sign "sad". They are really cute these days! I have even seen Maya smile a number of times at Addy...maybe it is not so bad to have a little sister after all!
