Most out-of-state patients have to stay in San Antonio until their two week follow-up, but because we live in Houston, we were allowed to come home and go back. Dr. Bonilla, was kind enough to let us come in on a Sunday to accommodate our work schedules , after he came straight from the airport, returning from Colorado to attend the Microtia/Atresia picnic held there this past Saturday. He said Miles was healing great and then took out the stitches at the front of Miles' new ear where he made the incision to insert the rib cartilage. He then answered our barrage of questions for an hour until we finally released him to go see his family and we made the long three hour trip home. He is still possibly one of the nicest most humble guys we have ever met and he is fantastic with Miles. He told us to go ahead and schedule our next surgery for late September early October for stage 1 on the other ear. It stresses me out to think we have to go through stage 1 all over again. Miles has already told us he doesn't want anymore surgery. We keep telling him Dr. Bonilla is not finished yet and he has to get through all the stages. Hopefully a couple of months off will help ease his mind before the next procedure. Overall Miles has handled all of this okay, but it's probably safe to say it is as good as we expected knowing the type of kid he is. He gets a lot of anxiety before any type of doctor visit now and wants to know exactly what is going to happen and what it will feel like. No appointment has been without tears, but that seems like something we are just going to have to get used to or he will have to grow out of . We have to be thankful that after an undetermined amount of time, Miles gives in and lets the doctor do what he needs to do. We always tell him how proud of him we are after and he usually concedes to being a bit over-dramatic at the time. These pictures were taken this morning. The first shows where the stitches came out in front of the ear. The next is just an updated ear pic and the last is the incision for the rib area. Dr. Bonilla used dissolvable stitches there and the darkened area is mostly a scab that will lift off eventually. (The markings around the rib incision are from tape residual which is proving harder to remove than I thought, even after several baths.) The remaining scar from the rib graft will be about 3/4 of an inch and should fade with time.
