Monday's News

Hi, we met with Dr Pocock and Dr Grayson this morning, 9 am. It took everything in Hannah to get ready on time, but she did it. She got up at 7:15 and was ready to go by 8:25. This included getting dressed, eating breakfast, rinsing her mouth with a terrible tasting oral rinse and having her appliance activated. It usually takes Hannah an hour just to rinse her mouth and have her appliance activated. We made it to the hospital by 8:45, a record time for rush hour.

Dr Grayson was a little late this morning so Dr Paul Pocock and I had a good chin wag about how Hannah's treatment has gone and how we, as Canadians, have somethings to learn about the customer service end of medical care and the accountability factors that come into play when you are paying for your own care. For those who don’t know Dr Pocock, he is Hannah’s champion. Dr Pocock initially referred us to Drs Grayson and McCarthy, and he has made the effort to travel to New York to learn about this procedure and bring the learning back to Vancouver to benefit other children requiring the same kind of surgical/orthodontic intervention.

The appointment was very productive, I learned about some the mechanical challenges that the distraction process presents and how they mediate the body’s natural tendencies to want to put everything back into it original place, even if that place is totally dysfunctional. I heard Dr Grayson explain how they use elastics to pull the growing bone into a vertical orientation. Dr Grayson used the word vector, a dreaded term that I studied in my many years of studying physics in High school and university. I never thought I would ever have a need to understand the concept of force as applied to a movement in a specific direction. I actually understood what they were talking about. Drs Grayson and Pocock talked about what was going to happen over the coming weeks and then what will happen after the consolidation phase(the 12 week period between the end of the appliance activation and when the appliance is removed), when we come back to NYC. Paul encouraged us to really consider coming back as having the device removed in Vancouver may burn many professional bridges for Hannah if we do not come back.

I asked about how long we would need to be here in December and Dr Grayson seemed to think a week would be good but there may need to be some more days then just 5 working days as the fabrication of the second orthodontic devise is complicated and labour intensive. The time back in New York will also be dependent on when Dr McCarthy can get OR time. Lets hope they can get it all done in one week. As always, Hannah was a star in the chair. She had photos taken by Dr Pocock and then Dr Grayson demonstrated how the elastics go in and how they act to cause the bones to line up as they need too. The bone is growing but it seems that that the anticipated gap that needs to occur between her upper and lower jaw has not opened up yet. I expect that we will see some of that movement on Friday when we have out appointment. We have our next an appointment on Friday at 8:30 am. My guess is that Judy and the kids will not going to be coming to that one as they will have just arrived into New York.

The rest of today had a great high and a serious low. The great high was a request that I received to consider making a presentation at Ronald McDonald House New York Giants NFL Fundraiser on Oct 20th. They would like me to be the parent to make a speech in front of all those who are gathered. I spend the first 3 hours of my afternoon today writing a draft speech. I then spent the last two hours of my afternoon trying to fax my special voting request to Ottawa for the upcoming election. That was the serious low. I got 5 straight hours of busy signal and so can not vote in next weeks Federal elections. It's my own fault but I really thought there would be more fax lines available to manage the anticipate rush of last minute applications.

Hannah had her second tutoring lesson today. Her teacher’s comment to me was that Hannah catches on quickly. Obviously, she is a brilliant kid! Hannah also joined in to the Mad Scientist’s soda making experiment and made a non carbonated grape pop, which she gave to me. She is having a great time with her friend Katherine, but sadly Katherine and her mom are head back to Albania soon. Hannah has being told the news but when you are six, a few days still has little relevance in your life. She will really miss Katherine and the time they spend together. There are of course lots of other kids at the house but not many six year olds. Many of the current house mates are 4 and under and there are now a number of teenagers who have come to stay at the house. It is a never ending intake. It breaks my heart!

Hannah and I were successful in getting Rangers tickets for the New Jersey game on Monday night. So when the rest of the family is here on the weekend its Mama Mia on Saturday night(Judy, Rebekah and Keziah), Spamalot (Judy, Zach and Rebekah) on Sunday and hockey (Zach and I) on Monday. How was we going to see the rest of NYC with so little time remaining? Priorize!

We hope everyone had a good day today.

TTFN

Hannah and John