It’s been a while…(yep I hear the song in my head as I write this as well)! I’ve been busy with work but to be honest I’ve just been really tired and dealing with an asthma flare up. Still kind of dealing with that but it’s gotten a whole ton better.

 

We left off last post in 1981 with the only entry and now we move to 1982 were there are  a few more reports.

 

First up is the discharge report for the first surgery I’ve had. I was admitted on April 11th, 1982 and left the hospital on April 19th, 1982. The first  part of the report details “History of present illness” really just sums up what they are looking to do during this visit and doesn’t really talk about my history. They ensured that during my stay under general anesthesia that the ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) team take a good look at my larynx.

 

According to this report my “Past History” is “otherwise unremarkable”. That’s a bit of a hit to the old ego!! Just joking, it’s good that there isn’t much to put here.

 

Next section is titled: “Physical Examination” and SURPRISE they just describe what they saw. I was described as “a tiny girl with abnormal facies.” Also the first mention of me being tongue-tied , this doesn’t wholey surprise me and makes an odd sense based on how my tongue is now.

 

The next section up is listed as “Course in Hospital” seems an odd name for a title but who am I to judge. This section is dedicated to describing the surgical interventions that were completed. I had surgery on April 12th, where they removed the 4 skin tags (3 by right ear and one on nose), they reconstructed the preauricular region to form a tragus. In other words that little blob at the opening to your ear that sits right in front of the opening wasn’t there so using what tissue was near by they created a little blob for me.

They moved on to fixing my eyes where they repaired. My right one seems to have been easy they were able to get the two parts of the eyelid together without any issues. The left eyelid defect called a bilateral upper lid-coloboma extended to a cleft extended to the eyebrow. To this day my left eye brow is in two with a predominant spot where the eyebrow didn’t grow and where the eye was repaired. Because the left upper eye lid didn’t form or much of one formed they created one using a skin graft, it doesn’t say where they took the skin from but my mom once said they used the skin tags they removed to build the full thickness graft. Being able to create an eyelid so tiny has to be an art and I’m glad they did but my left eyelid is kind of thick and bumpy and makes using eye shadow on that eye annoying. The last thing they did was release the tongue-tie. As mentioned above they wanted to review my larynx which they did and found no abnormalities.

 

I had no postoperative complications and was released on April 19th with no medication or any other notes.

 

The next entry from 1982 is dated May 14th where I had a follow up as an out-patient. It’s a short entry so I will reproduce it here. “This child’s eyelids look really good. the only problem left is the left tragus which is not adequate. The ICD is 32mm, already and we are just going to have to follow her to make sure that she does not become too wide. I have already explained to the parents that we would have to do her hypertelorim when she is about 2 electively.” I did include a link to what hypertelorim is but in cause you want to skip that it just refers to the large distance between the eyes.

 

The final entry for 1982 is dated September 24th, just after my 1st birthday. It was again a out-patient visit for the surgery in April. Again it’s short and sweet so here is what it says. “This girl’s eyelids really look excellent today and we are going to get some new photographs. She does have an infection of the left larcimal sac and I’m sending her to back to Dr. Pashby to see about that. If Cr. Pashby is going to do anything at any time, I will re-align the eyebrow which has a step deformity. Otherwise I will see her in 6 months’ time, as she is going to need a hyperteloriam correction. I think probably around the age of 2 or 3. At the moment the ICD is 32mms..” No real surprises here but talking about fixing the distance between eyes still seems like it’s gone from something elective to something that they really want to get done. Looking at the only picture I have of myself at a young age it doesn’t appear that was actually done. I think the distance between my two eyes seem larger than the average person.

Next up will be 1983 and might combine with 1984 we shall see!!