Today we had the long awaited \u201cconference\u201d at the Institute of Reconstructive Surgery at NYU Medical Center. We made a three-day weekend out of the trip. We stayed with Etan\u2019s brother in Manhattan and made it over to the Institute early this morning. It took us longer than expected to arrive because we couldn\u2019t find an available cab. So, after over an hour\u2019s wait (apparently they had some unexpected delays with families coming from Ireland and Poland) we were called into a room filled with about 20 doctors. Finally, it felt like we have found the sought after \u201cteam\u201d approach to Ella\u2019s plastic surgery needs. She was examined, while asleep, by a dentist\/orthodontist and we chatted with their neurosurgeon. Dr. Joe McCarthy headed up the team. He was like the NY version of Dr. Mulliken (suit and tie instead of bow tie). They had us sit up at the very front of the room. Dr. McCarthy asked what our main concern was at this point. I thought it was pretty obvious but I think the whole issue of the half missing brain was somehow foremost in their minds. The meeting was intimidating, like we were on trial, until we saw one of the young doctors in the front row nodding off to sleep as we spoke. Anyway\u2026another couple of hours passed in the waiting room and cafeteria. Then Dr. McCarthy with his fellow called us in for a summary and his recommendations following the conference. The most important points were regarding timing and he recommended seeing Dr. DuLacure, a plastic surgeon who deals a lot with the facial nerve in cancer patients. Immediately, the team nurse suggested getting Dr. D. to \u201cpop in\u201d if he was in the hospital. Luckily, very luckily, by the end of the day we had seen him too. Dr. McCarthy thought earlier was better for the surgery since the soft tissue growth may be driving the bone growth. We definetly had more of a feeling of a group effort. The whole day made me feel hopeful about Ella\u2019s craniofacial issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today we had the long awaited \u201cconference\u201d at the Institute of Reconstructive Surgery at NYU Medical Center. We made a three-day weekend out of the trip. We stayed with Etan\u2019s brother in Manhattan and made it over to the Institute early this morning. It took us longer than expected to arrive because we couldn\u2019t find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ellaslog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4PM2I-m7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rozinblog.com\/ella\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}