"I like my ear"
We were on the way home from a Father's Day dinner. We got back to Honolulu on Wednesday, the 17th of June, from Sunnyvale, California.
Dr. Brent had told her before the whole thing started that she was about to embark on a magical adventure, and it's kind of been that way.
"It feels like an ear," she had said, earlier in the day.
She's been happy ever since the operation. Even though all that has happened so far is that Dr. Brent has inserted a cartilage form in the shape of an ear under her skin, that's been enough to lift her spirits. When we were waiting for Maia to come out of surgery, we shared the room with a woman from Beirut who was accompanying her niece and brother. "She will be happy," the woman had told her. "It will give her hope." And she was right.
We got to San Francisco on Saturday, June 6th. We met my mother at the airport, and the four of us drove to Sunnyvale.
On Sunday, we drove into San Francisco. We parked in Chinatown, walked through the place, and then took the street car to Fisherman's Wharf. We got off on the top of the hill where that windy road is, and walked down to Fisherman's Wharf. Maia greeted everyone we passed on the way down, as she normally does. An older couple stopped and talked with us for a while. Maia really does have a way with people.
On Monday, we went to Dr. Brent's office for the pre-surgery conference. He made a tracing of Maia's right ear on a little square transparency, and then flipped it over. "I'm going to use this to make your left ear," he explained.
He made a show of putting it into his wallet.
"Do you know why I'm putting it here?" he asked.
"So you'll know where it is?" Maia ventured.
"Good answer," he said. "So I'll have it with me. In all of the years I've been doing this, I've only forgotten my wallet once. Had to go home to get it," he said.
Dr. Brent is a friendly guy, and one of a kind in terms of his accomplishments. A sculptor, the foremost ear reconstructionist in the world, probably, and a musician, too. A banjo player and friend of Earl Scrubbs.
I asked him how he had gotten the idea for this surgery.
He explained that he had been trying to figure out how to put his art and medical practice together, and had learned of a doctor at Dartmouth who was pioneering ear reconstructions. So he visited him, three days after that doctor had retired, it turned out. He and that doctor became life long friends, and Dr. Brent perfected the technique.
"I've done about 1,860," he explained. His predecessor had only done about 50 in his entire career. "It's all I do," he said. "99% of my patients are between 6 and 10. I'm president of the easily amused club," he said.
They talked fish at one point because Dr. Brent had asked her if she had pets. He asked her what kind of fish she said, and I suggested that she tell him their names. "Two Angels, two Harries, and George," she said. I could see that her answer really amused Dr. Brent.
Maia took a liking to him, and he to her. "She really is very cute," he said.
The rest of that day was a kind of anxious time. "Are you excited?" Dr. Brent had asked her. "Yes," she said. "Are you scared?" he had added. "Yes," she said. He had told her then that it was going to be the start of a magical adventure. "I am privileged," he said at one point, "to be able to work on them." He was talking about children. I understand that he and his wife are childless. Perhaps this work fills up a space that would otherwise be a void.
That night, the three of us piled onto the bed in one bedroom of the suite (my mom had the other), and Maia curled into the curve of my body and pulled my arm over her.
Later on, I made several dry runs to the hospital from the motel. I didn't want to get lost on the way the next day because we had to be there by 6:30am.
We made it on time. Maia was raring to go.
We spent a little time in the waiting room, filling out forms, and then were taken back to pre-op. Maia was changed and given a "cocktail." She got woozy pretty quickly. Dr. Brent came in to see how we were doing.
"Do you take cute pills every morning?" he wanted to know.
He soon left to do his warmups in the bull pen, he said.
The operation only took about 2 and a half hours. Dr. Brent met us in the waiting room and told us it had been quite successful. "She has a pretty carving," he said.
The operation involves an incision on the side opposite the side that will get the reconstructed ear. Dr. Brent removes a piece of cartilage out of which he fashions the armature of an ear. He then cuts out the curve of the good ear from the transparency and uses a pen to dot out the shape of the good ear on the surgery site. He then makes an incision where the cartilage will go and uses the dots on the surface of the skin as a guide for where to place the cartilate. In two (sometimes three) later operations, he forms the ear lobe and detaches the new structure from the side of the head, putting skin grafts on the back side of the ear. The result is a fully vascularized new ear.
Maia had a mask on, feeding her oxygen when we were taken back to her about 45 minutes later. She was still coming out of the anesthesia and wasn't too happy about anything at that point. It took a while for her to become fully conscious. She remained tired and groggy and sore.
"I want food," she said to me at one point, but all that the staff could give her was popsicles, jello, and pudding. They didn't want the violence of chewing to disturb her new ear.
Maia and Kristina spent the night at the hospital.
My mother and I went to pick them up the next day at about 7am, and Maia was ready to leave.
She was happy that she had had the operation but was also happy to be back at the motel.
We met three other families that day--Mary and Thomas from North Carolina, with their children, Gracie (who was also going to have the operation) and Griffin, Angie from Pennsylvania and her daughter Sabrina (on her third operation), and Tami and her son Tabor from Jerusalem. The children--especially the girls--played together and became friends.
Maia insisted on going somewhere, though. She didn't want to just sit at the motel. We talked her out of the zoo and settled on going to the aquarium at Monterey.
The aquarium was amazing, but this was something Maia really wasn't up to. We insisted that she use a wheelchair--she was doubled over from the pain left over in her side from the surgery--but it still took a lot out of her.
On the way back, she complained at the car's rocking on the country road we had somehow ended up on, and I had to take it very slowly. When we finally got back to the motel, she was in pain. Getting out of the car was extremely difficult, and walking was another matter entirely. We were on the second floor of the motel, and she cried at each step going up. There was nothing we could do. I couldn't pick her up because I was afraid that that would hurt her even more.
On Thursday, she was markedly better.
She played with Gracie and Sabrina that morning, and with me, too. There was a miniature golf course at the motel--a tiny little thing, but fun for the kids--and a basketball court, too. I wouldn't let her play basketball, but she wanted to watch, and ultimately, she did play a little with the ball.
On Thursday afternoon, we paid a visit to Dr. Brent's clinic.
"How's my cutie-pie?" he asked, and Maia launched into a confession. "I broke the rules," she said. "I runned, and I played miniature golf, and I played basketball." Dr. Brent was stern with her for that, though I suspect his words were more directed at us for having let her do these things. But he was also tickled, too, at the way she had just launched into her confession.
I drank a few too many beers, Thursday night.
On Friday, we took it easy, and I caught up on some work. In the day of the internet, my office is never very far away.
Maia had talked about going to the zoo, but she recognized that that would be a challenge, and she was having fun with her friends, anyhow.
That afternoon, I talked with my Uncle Harold, who lives in Chico, about 200 miles form Sunnyvale. My mother had talked about wanting to see him, and I wanted to see him, too, and to introduce him to Maia. Harold was always one of my favorite relatives because he's funny and fun to be around. He's just a really nice guy.
We made the decision to visit and took off the next day. We got to Chico in the late afternoon and caught up with Harold at a coffee house. He was playing banjo and jamming with other blue grass musicians and singers.
Afterwards, we went home with Harold and had dinner with him and Aunt Polly.
All this time, Maia had been happy. There were bandages on her head and two plastic tubes coming out from underneath the bandagest to two glass vacuum tubes to drain the incision. But she could feel the shape of the ear through the bandages, and it made her happy.
We only spent one night in Chico. We drove back the next day after catching up with Ben, one of Harold's sons, and his wife, Valley, who are also both doctors. They were interested in Maia's operation. They also took out the tubes for us on Sunday. Otherwise, we would have had to do that.
For Maia, Monday was another play day with the kids at the motel. Angie's mother painted the three girls' toe nails and put little dots on them. THe girls loved it. That afternoon, Kristina suggested that we have a barbecue that night at the facility at the motel. We ended up having a party. We invited the other families to join us, and they all did, except for Tami and Tabor, who had to be concerned about their Kosher, dietary restrictions.
On Tuesday, we went back to Dr. Brent's clinic to take the old bandages off and replace them with new ones. This would be the first time that anyone would see the new ear.
I was a little concerned about this because Maia is such a perfectionist. But when the bandages came off and she was given a mirror to look at herself, she was all smiles. She could see the outline of her ear, even though there was still no structure standing out from her face, and that was enough.
When Dr. Brent left us this last time, he gave Maia a kiss on the forehead.
(I will fill this in with pics, later. I've also put up a large gallery on the mobileme site. The address is http://gallery.me.com/johndamato/100001.)
John, Father's Day, June 21, 2009
Dr. Brent had told her before the whole thing started that she was about to embark on a magical adventure, and it's kind of been that way.
"It feels like an ear," she had said, earlier in the day.
She's been happy ever since the operation. Even though all that has happened so far is that Dr. Brent has inserted a cartilage form in the shape of an ear under her skin, that's been enough to lift her spirits. When we were waiting for Maia to come out of surgery, we shared the room with a woman from Beirut who was accompanying her niece and brother. "She will be happy," the woman had told her. "It will give her hope." And she was right.
We got to San Francisco on Saturday, June 6th. We met my mother at the airport, and the four of us drove to Sunnyvale.
On Sunday, we drove into San Francisco. We parked in Chinatown, walked through the place, and then took the street car to Fisherman's Wharf. We got off on the top of the hill where that windy road is, and walked down to Fisherman's Wharf. Maia greeted everyone we passed on the way down, as she normally does. An older couple stopped and talked with us for a while. Maia really does have a way with people.
On Monday, we went to Dr. Brent's office for the pre-surgery conference. He made a tracing of Maia's right ear on a little square transparency, and then flipped it over. "I'm going to use this to make your left ear," he explained.
He made a show of putting it into his wallet.
"Do you know why I'm putting it here?" he asked.
"So you'll know where it is?" Maia ventured.
"Good answer," he said. "So I'll have it with me. In all of the years I've been doing this, I've only forgotten my wallet once. Had to go home to get it," he said.
Dr. Brent is a friendly guy, and one of a kind in terms of his accomplishments. A sculptor, the foremost ear reconstructionist in the world, probably, and a musician, too. A banjo player and friend of Earl Scrubbs.
I asked him how he had gotten the idea for this surgery.
He explained that he had been trying to figure out how to put his art and medical practice together, and had learned of a doctor at Dartmouth who was pioneering ear reconstructions. So he visited him, three days after that doctor had retired, it turned out. He and that doctor became life long friends, and Dr. Brent perfected the technique.
"I've done about 1,860," he explained. His predecessor had only done about 50 in his entire career. "It's all I do," he said. "99% of my patients are between 6 and 10. I'm president of the easily amused club," he said.
They talked fish at one point because Dr. Brent had asked her if she had pets. He asked her what kind of fish she said, and I suggested that she tell him their names. "Two Angels, two Harries, and George," she said. I could see that her answer really amused Dr. Brent.
Maia took a liking to him, and he to her. "She really is very cute," he said.
The rest of that day was a kind of anxious time. "Are you excited?" Dr. Brent had asked her. "Yes," she said. "Are you scared?" he had added. "Yes," she said. He had told her then that it was going to be the start of a magical adventure. "I am privileged," he said at one point, "to be able to work on them." He was talking about children. I understand that he and his wife are childless. Perhaps this work fills up a space that would otherwise be a void.
That night, the three of us piled onto the bed in one bedroom of the suite (my mom had the other), and Maia curled into the curve of my body and pulled my arm over her.
Later on, I made several dry runs to the hospital from the motel. I didn't want to get lost on the way the next day because we had to be there by 6:30am.
We made it on time. Maia was raring to go.
We spent a little time in the waiting room, filling out forms, and then were taken back to pre-op. Maia was changed and given a "cocktail." She got woozy pretty quickly. Dr. Brent came in to see how we were doing.
"Do you take cute pills every morning?" he wanted to know.
He soon left to do his warmups in the bull pen, he said.
The operation only took about 2 and a half hours. Dr. Brent met us in the waiting room and told us it had been quite successful. "She has a pretty carving," he said.
The operation involves an incision on the side opposite the side that will get the reconstructed ear. Dr. Brent removes a piece of cartilage out of which he fashions the armature of an ear. He then cuts out the curve of the good ear from the transparency and uses a pen to dot out the shape of the good ear on the surgery site. He then makes an incision where the cartilage will go and uses the dots on the surface of the skin as a guide for where to place the cartilate. In two (sometimes three) later operations, he forms the ear lobe and detaches the new structure from the side of the head, putting skin grafts on the back side of the ear. The result is a fully vascularized new ear.
Maia had a mask on, feeding her oxygen when we were taken back to her about 45 minutes later. She was still coming out of the anesthesia and wasn't too happy about anything at that point. It took a while for her to become fully conscious. She remained tired and groggy and sore.
"I want food," she said to me at one point, but all that the staff could give her was popsicles, jello, and pudding. They didn't want the violence of chewing to disturb her new ear.
Maia and Kristina spent the night at the hospital.
My mother and I went to pick them up the next day at about 7am, and Maia was ready to leave.
She was happy that she had had the operation but was also happy to be back at the motel.
We met three other families that day--Mary and Thomas from North Carolina, with their children, Gracie (who was also going to have the operation) and Griffin, Angie from Pennsylvania and her daughter Sabrina (on her third operation), and Tami and her son Tabor from Jerusalem. The children--especially the girls--played together and became friends.
Maia insisted on going somewhere, though. She didn't want to just sit at the motel. We talked her out of the zoo and settled on going to the aquarium at Monterey.
The aquarium was amazing, but this was something Maia really wasn't up to. We insisted that she use a wheelchair--she was doubled over from the pain left over in her side from the surgery--but it still took a lot out of her.
On the way back, she complained at the car's rocking on the country road we had somehow ended up on, and I had to take it very slowly. When we finally got back to the motel, she was in pain. Getting out of the car was extremely difficult, and walking was another matter entirely. We were on the second floor of the motel, and she cried at each step going up. There was nothing we could do. I couldn't pick her up because I was afraid that that would hurt her even more.
On Thursday, she was markedly better.
She played with Gracie and Sabrina that morning, and with me, too. There was a miniature golf course at the motel--a tiny little thing, but fun for the kids--and a basketball court, too. I wouldn't let her play basketball, but she wanted to watch, and ultimately, she did play a little with the ball.
On Thursday afternoon, we paid a visit to Dr. Brent's clinic.
"How's my cutie-pie?" he asked, and Maia launched into a confession. "I broke the rules," she said. "I runned, and I played miniature golf, and I played basketball." Dr. Brent was stern with her for that, though I suspect his words were more directed at us for having let her do these things. But he was also tickled, too, at the way she had just launched into her confession.
I drank a few too many beers, Thursday night.
On Friday, we took it easy, and I caught up on some work. In the day of the internet, my office is never very far away.
Maia had talked about going to the zoo, but she recognized that that would be a challenge, and she was having fun with her friends, anyhow.
That afternoon, I talked with my Uncle Harold, who lives in Chico, about 200 miles form Sunnyvale. My mother had talked about wanting to see him, and I wanted to see him, too, and to introduce him to Maia. Harold was always one of my favorite relatives because he's funny and fun to be around. He's just a really nice guy.
We made the decision to visit and took off the next day. We got to Chico in the late afternoon and caught up with Harold at a coffee house. He was playing banjo and jamming with other blue grass musicians and singers.
Afterwards, we went home with Harold and had dinner with him and Aunt Polly.
All this time, Maia had been happy. There were bandages on her head and two plastic tubes coming out from underneath the bandagest to two glass vacuum tubes to drain the incision. But she could feel the shape of the ear through the bandages, and it made her happy.
We only spent one night in Chico. We drove back the next day after catching up with Ben, one of Harold's sons, and his wife, Valley, who are also both doctors. They were interested in Maia's operation. They also took out the tubes for us on Sunday. Otherwise, we would have had to do that.
For Maia, Monday was another play day with the kids at the motel. Angie's mother painted the three girls' toe nails and put little dots on them. THe girls loved it. That afternoon, Kristina suggested that we have a barbecue that night at the facility at the motel. We ended up having a party. We invited the other families to join us, and they all did, except for Tami and Tabor, who had to be concerned about their Kosher, dietary restrictions.
On Tuesday, we went back to Dr. Brent's clinic to take the old bandages off and replace them with new ones. This would be the first time that anyone would see the new ear.
I was a little concerned about this because Maia is such a perfectionist. But when the bandages came off and she was given a mirror to look at herself, she was all smiles. She could see the outline of her ear, even though there was still no structure standing out from her face, and that was enough.
When Dr. Brent left us this last time, he gave Maia a kiss on the forehead.
(I will fill this in with pics, later. I've also put up a large gallery on the mobileme site. The address is http://gallery.me.com/johndamato/100001.)
John, Father's Day, June 21, 2009
posted by John at 6/21/2009 08:23:00 PM
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