There on the hospital video monitor we were given an interior view of exactly how Henry manages to speak with half of his speech apparatus handmade from stretched musculature, processed donor tissue, and repositioned skin and cartilage. Point made.
As we all stared at the monitor, our primary surgeon had added a quiet note to the usual objective refrain, one that really sunk in. "Listen, folks, he's talking, not perfectly, but talking, which is very, very good," he said with the unmistakable tone of someone referring to an outcome that had been far from certain. "You have to consider where he started in this."
When our girls were little they sometimes spoke of piggy "binks" or, during parade season, Zulu "cloconuts." Now the same age, Henry takes his own unique angle toward almost all of his words, skipping the consonants from nearly every first syllable for example, because for now he has to. But we suspect that someday we'll smile in warm memory of this too, since he's so exuberant in his effort and is making such obvious although difficult headway.
Meanwhile, Henry passed his readiness test and is officially set to enter kindergarten in August.
A very sincere thank you to those who pitched in to support physical therapy at the Pingliang orphanage after our latest call for contributions through Love Without Boundaries. It's a small world after all. We were able to raise the funds needed for the orphanage to send the additional staff members to an intensive physical therapy training program (see previous post). They left for Chongqing in October and will have returned home in time for Chinese New Year, bringing the number of staff formally trained in physical therapy at the orphanage to four. Some of you made general donations as well.
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