Annual visit to Shriner's Hospital

Last week, we took the train down to Chicago for the annual visit to Shriner's Hospital. This year was different for a few reasons, first Jiang Lei was able to talk to the Dr.s much more this year and ask his own questions and second the 12 or so patients on the day we went were all boys so the waiting room was play central!


















Jiang Lei was able to get a very thorough speech evaluation. He speaks some sounds with a nasal air expulsion and they had thought that his soft palate was not able to close fully, thereby leaking air. He is receiving his speech therapy at school based upon that premise. However they did this very interesting test while we were there. They put something like a putty cork in one nostril to keep air from coming out and then they put a tube in his mouth and another tube in his other nostril. They measured the air escaping from his mounth (speaking) and matched it to the air escaping from his nose at the same time. He was able to control the air going through his nose for certain sounds and therefore no hole in the palate. What he has is a learned habit of saying some sounds through his nose and not his mouth, which remains from the time before his surgery. Now we need to get back to his speech teacher at school and let him know. Also, he is about 2 years away from his bone graft surgery as they need to have his premolars developing the roots and his adult teeth ready to come in. We will check back in under 1 year to see how everything is developing and keep an eye on this growth. Here are some photos of this getting the nose "puff" test and taking an Xray. The last photo is of him building a tower in one of the offices while Mommy was talking with one of the specialists.