His Face!!!

This month has been a wild ride in our son's medical history. See the picture above, He is not making the face to be silly or cute. He cannot move the left side of his face. He is not blinking, cannot completely close the eyelid and cannot move that side of his mouth. It is temporarily paralized due to Bell's Palsy. The nerves were damaged somehow (the reason or cause of Bell's palsy is unknown) and now we must wait for the nerves to regenerate. It can take weeks or months.

Let me back up and explain the whole story. Our son was born with a cleft lip and palate. He has had several surgeries over the years and we had a surgery scheduled on July 13th to help A with his speech. We got this date back at the end of April.....the dr is busy!

We went to a Pre Op appt a week before surgery with the ENT who will be doing ear tubes at the same time as the palate repair. At the office A was diagnosed with a sinus infection, he had been a little sick over the weekend. The ENT also heard some noise in A's chest. He prescribed an antibiotic and we expected Austin to be well enough for surgery by next week.

Well, he got worse not better. I gave it 2 days to see if the antibiotics would kick in and improve things but no. He did not want to stand up or get off the couch. He did not want to eat much and I finally decided we need to see the pediatrician. She checked him out and listened to his lungs and she heard crackling and wheezing. She sent us for a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia. The x-ray did not indicate that but she did diagnose us with walking pneumonia and gave us lots more meds. DUE to this we had to cancel surgery because Austin would not have been approved to go under anesthesia.

The next day was Friday and busy. He slept in, I went grocery shopping, then lunch and had to take his brother to scouts. It was not until mid afternoon that I really got to look at Austin and I notice.....half of his face is not moving. I call the Ped office to ask if this could be a side effect of any medicine he was on. She said no, go to the ER. She suspected Bell's palsy over the phone and told me to get it checked today. I was asking to wait until Sat Morning office hours not wanting to do the ER thing. So off we went to the ER where we got the official Bell's Palsy diagnosis and more meds. Did I mention Austin hates to take medicine!! Now he was on lots!! Not Fun!!

By Saturday, he is feeling much better and was up and moving and eating. So the Ped's meds helped. But the Bell's Palsy remains. I call the cleft team Dr office to tell them about the Bell's Palsy and they now want to wait until that gets better before operating. So we wait!!!

I only hope that we get all of this taken care of before the start of school!! I hope his face is better and we can get this surgery done so he can start off the school year successful!