Lymphatic Malformation Surgery Chronicles - Tongue Reduction pt. 1

I had other surgeries between the laser job at 3 years old and now, like the time I had 7 teeth removed including my wisdom teeth, to again, give me more room in my mouth and avoid future dental complications. It was an outpatient surgery, but I was in the hospital and I was under anesthesia.

This is probably going to be a multi-part post because there was so much to it. Not just the surgery, but decision to do it, the events leading up to it and the surgery itself and recovery.

The decision to do it

My parents, Dr. Edmonds and me (I guess), decided to go ahead and schedule the surgery that Dr. Joe warned my parents about when I was a baby. He told them that he always wanted to avoid cutting anything on me (my kind of doctor truthfully), but that at one point, we may seriously want to consider doing a tongue reduction surgery. He said it would not solve anything with the LM (lymphatic malformation) specifically, but it would dramatically help my day-to-day living by keeping my tongue in my mouth when it did swell. All of us had never heard of a tongue reduction surgery and it sounded like the worst thing ever. But, our amazing Dr. Joe had done thousands of them without any issues. So there was that.

It was scheduled for summer so I wouldn't miss school (oh well) and the date was set. July 3, 2014. This was not going to be the fireworks I wanted, but that liquid pain medicine in the hospital did BURN like CRAZY on my tongue BTW! Anyway, my birthday is in November, so I was 10 and a half.

Leading up to it

I LOVED playing baseball. And while I don't play anymore, I still love the sport. At the time, I was on a really good team called the Warriors (a really cool coincidence I think). All of my teammates and their parents are super nice. We had been playing all spring and the tournament season ended the week before my surgery in a state tournament.

Two amazing things happened at that tournament:

1. I hit my first ever home run and it was a grand slam! It provided us the lead, but another teammate hit a walk-off base hit and we won in the quarter finals! Below is a slide show of 6 photos. We didn't get it all captured, because, well, WHO KNEW!?

2. The other amazing thing was the video that my teammates and their families did for me. I watched in my hotel room after my surgery, but it makes sense here:

pt. 2 coming soon