One of the biggest adjustments for me coming to America (I was too young to realize this at the time) was the language. I only understood Vietnamese and my family only spoke English. My mom had arranged for a speech therapist to come the very first week I had come home, knowing she would help me in the future. When she came in I was eating some bread, cheese and a banana, she signed in sign language to me those words. The next morning I was hitting my mom on the leg signing the word bread…good first word to sign to a baker family J My mom was like “oh my gosh!” and she ran and got her sign language book she had gotten years ago in college and realized that this was going to be very helpful. So she started teaching me “toddler talk” ex. “Help, more, hungry, thirsty, toilet J” She was amazed at how quickly I caught on, this became the way we communicated until I would have my palate sewn together.
The biggest change for my family was to see my mouth sewn together. They were so used to seeing me and all my beauty…? J That having my lips sewn together was a huge change. They always accepted me how I was, yet knew I would change eventually but when the time came they were still surprised.
One week after my second surgery (lips sewn together)
Surgery 3-May
After my lips were sewn together I later had my palate sewn together, unfortunately we were not able to get a picture of this. The downside to this procedure was that I was unable to eat any solid food for 3 weeks. I was strictly on a liquid diet. I had to allow the palate to fully form together and the tissue to build up before any pressure could be applied to it. This was much of a struggle for me, because I LOVED food J I would eat practically anything I could. My mom felt so bad for me that sometimes she would have my siblings eat in a separate room than me, because it was too hard for her to see 3 of her children eating and one of them having to be only on liquids.
No comments:
Post a Comment