The Battle of the Exploding Cysts

One of the reasons that we feel Joe hasn't started eating yet is exploding cysts. 

He's had a cyst under his tongue since his Tongue-Lip Adhesion when he was two weeks old. It grows, then explodes, then grows back. Sometimes it grows, it gets removed surgically, and then grows back. That's a bummer. 

This time instead of just taking out the exploding cyst, the surgeon also removed his salivary gland that was making all the cysts. No gland, no cysts. 

And, because it is Joe, this took four hours instead of two. Which left an anxious momma watching this screen (Joe is the "OR In" yellow line): 

Turns out that one salivary gland was all mixed up with another salivary gland and the surgeon had to tease the good one out and reposition it while getting rid of the bad one. It took awhile. The floor of Joe's mouth is rather weak, it just doesn't have muscle tone. 

Joe has hypotonia---he didn't have enough strength to walk until after his second birthday. His ankles are still super weak and he trips over himself and has a difficult time negotiating uneven surfaces. Although muscle gets stronger the more you use it, with hypotonia, it takes way, way, way more effort to get even slight results. 

So, the muscle in his mouth was wonky, and there was so much scar tissue from previous surgeries that everything looks funny in there anyway, which means that surgery took awhile longer than anticipated. The surgeon came out and explained what happened, while drawing diagrams for me. I like surgeons.  They get things done. 

We had to stay the night, instead of going home. Joe had oxygen blowing in his face. 

And once he woke up, he only wanted to sleep on me. 

The next morning, as soon as I took off Joe's blue hospital gown and put on his pants, he knew that meant he was going home. He shoved himself down onto the floor, and with only pants and one sock went out the door to tell all the nurses that he was going home. 

The first thing he did when we walked through the door was to go talk to Caleb. 

This battle is done, and the outcome looks good, but the war rages on.