School Days

after many meetings and introductions, jamison has started school! he goes for about two hours each day right now. depending on how things go, his days will be lengthened accordingly.
so far, he LOVES it.
he has a cane traveling instructor, and a braille teacher. his braille teacher seems to be a wonderful fit for jamison as she is a huge go-getter and VERY excited about his education. a whole new world opened up for him the first day he started to use the braille books and braille machine.
you should have seen him the first time he started to figure out the alphabet in braille. it was AMAZING and so beautiful. you could see in his whole body the recognition beginning to take place. he was so excited. i just sat next to him with tears running down my face. it was such a great moment to see. we work each day with his braille machine (it's like a type writer, except it types out braille). he is so ready to learn, he works very hard and soaks up everything.
right now, he is going through an evaluation with translators to try to determine the best plan of action for his specific educational needs. there is very much to consider.

on a different note, he has his first surgery coming up. November 4th he will have plastic surgery on his nose and mouth and he will have an expander placed in his neck. Dr. Wood hopes to "de-bulk" and give more definition to jamison's nose. he will also enlarge the opening on the left side of jamison's mouth, enabling him to open his mouth more. right now it is difficult for jamison to take proper care of his teeth because he can't open his mouth far enough to floss or brush in the very back of his mouth. Dr. Wood will also be placing an expander in the right side of jamison's neck. Some of you out there have had the pleasure of working with expanders before, and you know how much fun they are! :) an expander is like a little balloon placed under the skin and slowly "inflated" over an eight week time period. this will stretch out the skin on his neck and give Dr. Wood a lot of loose skin to do reconstructive procedures on jamison's neck.
the process of getting the expander inflated slowly makes you look like you have a massive tumor growing off of your body. it isn't pretty, but the end result can be pretty amazing.
jamison says he is ready for this and that he understand's what is going to happen. i believe him. he says he has had worse procedures before and he seems to think this won't be so bad. wow. i am so happy that we will be able to be with him through all of this. it was so hard to be so far away from him when he was going through different procedures in China. i am very happy to be able to take care of him this time.

he does have more surgery coming up soon to do reconstructive work on his eye lids, but that is not scheduled yet. he creates quite a stir with all of the different doctor's we go to. he is being such a trooper. he has a lot ahead of him, but he seems up for the challenge.
right now he is thinking about "trick or treating" and keeps on asking me if he can go get candy yet. he's really excited for his first halloween and wants to dress up as old mac donald. :)