Doing the right thing is not always easy. Heart children can have a bad dental status for various reasons, as I’ve mentioned before. On top of that poorly mineralised enamel and dry mouths often go along with the 22q11 syndrome. In other words Abbe’s teeth are very vulnerable.
But then there’s the feeding issue. The easiest time to feed Abbe is while he’s asleep. And that’s not the cleverest of things teeth-wise. Then add the toothbrushing dilemma. Abbe is not exactly friends with the toothbrush and starts a small scale war everytime he sees it coming. How to do the right thing? Beats me.
We told one of the 22q11-specialists on Abbe’s team about our concearns – the dentist at Mun-H-Center at the Sahlgrenska Hospital. “Stop worrying”, she said “You’ve enough on your minds as it is. We’ll deal with the problems if and when they arrive.”
Tear-time again. This time out of joy. There are people who can handle people in this world. On top of being brilliant at what they do. Food for thought, huh, orthopaedists? ;-)
18 August 2006
M, n and ng.
Did you kow that the sounding of all Swedish consonants but three require a blocking of the airstream between the mouth and the nose? No. Air. Allowed. Through. Or else it’s not a consonant. Not a right soundning one, at least. The three? M, n and ng.
Pieces fell into place when I was told about this at the speech therapist’s today. Abbe obviously has some sort of cleft palate. Not visible to the eye, probably something in the soft parts of the palate. I think it’s called a Submucosal cleft palate. No one has examined him as of yet, but with my new found knowledge on the sounding of consonants it seems likely.
That’s why Abbe says Mamma without a problem but not Pappa (I was beginning to get a bit jealous). And that’s why the s sounds a little like a sneeze when he says is (ice). He’s taken to the Norwegian word for icecream you see. Possibly to avoid the letters l and g, aswell (Ice cream in Swedish is “glass” and in Norwegian it’s “is”). Or because he’s allergic to milk. In Abbe land ice cream simply equals ice (“is”).
Pieces fell into place when I was told about this at the speech therapist’s today. Abbe obviously has some sort of cleft palate. Not visible to the eye, probably something in the soft parts of the palate. I think it’s called a Submucosal cleft palate. No one has examined him as of yet, but with my new found knowledge on the sounding of consonants it seems likely.
That’s why Abbe says Mamma without a problem but not Pappa (I was beginning to get a bit jealous). And that’s why the s sounds a little like a sneeze when he says is (ice). He’s taken to the Norwegian word for icecream you see. Possibly to avoid the letters l and g, aswell (Ice cream in Swedish is “glass” and in Norwegian it’s “is”). Or because he’s allergic to milk. In Abbe land ice cream simply equals ice (“is”).
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