We went back to Duke yesterday for what I thought would be a routine Post-op. visit after his "bone graft" surgery to repair his Alveolar ridge. At Duke for every child who has the "Alveolar ridge" surgery they make a splint to hold everything in place while the graft heals. This piece of plastic (splint) is wired and glued into the mouth and will stay in typically 8-10 weeks.Needless to say, things ended up not being so routine. J. had a wire poking him and decided as he had done with his previous expanders to stick wax on the little "pokey". He kept sticking wax on that little pokey, until he had a whole case inside this splint and covering the incision where the repair was made. Me, mommy didn't notice this because when we cleaned his teeth all I saw was just the little bit of wax on the surface. In the doctor's office they tried to clean it out. Once they removed the wax you could see that it was preventing that side to heal and things were still raw. In the office they tried to rewire the splint back. However, our family is blessed with extra slick enamel (No cavities for us!) and the glue was off from the splint the day after surgery so wiring is the only option. The way J.'s teeth are (tipped outward) the wires are just sliding off as well. So the doc.s decided that this morning they needed to put J. to sleep and wire this splint back on up through the gum line at the root of his teeth.
Here is our precious boy still sleeping after this one. What a strong young man to be taking things as if they are just what we do in life. He woke up much better this time and in a lot less pain than the surgery. We will be going back in about 5 weeks to go to sleep again in order for them to remove the splint. As a mother I do think this splint is very important in his case as he was born with a large protruding pre-maxilla that had to be totally removed, reattached and set up and back. The worst case scenario would be to lose blood flow to that pre-maxilla and J. lose that segment of bone all together. I am all for them holding things in place, while the bone from the graft fuses together and the bone that is holding the pre-maxilla in place regrows back together.