Fill #3

We completed Evan’s fill last Friday and like the second one, accomplished the job with a complete trooper! My sister Hallie and her husband Alex came by for a visit and also assisted with keeping Evan preoccupied. I think it is hilarious because I am so concentrated on his injection but from the corner of my eye, I can see our visitors dancing, and I can also see the look in Evan’s eyes and know he is probably thinking what are these loonies doing! Ha! I didn’t quite hit the port this last fill. I could tell because I was trying to push in the syringe but nothing was happening. I was able to take the needle out and was successful on my second attempt.

Evan has had a ton of visitors over the last week which has been awesome! And a lot of people were under the impression that he would have a tube sticking out of his head that we fill, probably because that was our assumption until his pre-op. We actually have to break skin with a needle each time we do a fill. The needle is connected to a 30 mL syringe full of saline (of course not all of which fills the bubble). There is a tube that connects the two. The tube is very small so the amount of saline that passes through the needle into the expander creates a slow filling process.

We were able to get in 18 cc’s of fluid, which brings us to 75 cc’s, which is 30% of our goal. Although Evan has a 250 cc expander, there is nothing stopping us from putting in more if we are able to exceed our goal. The more skin the better! We would rather have 300 cc’s in there and supersede our goal than have to go through 2 more surgeries AFTER the December surgery (one to put in another expander, then one to remove it). Only time will tell.
It may be unrealistic to think that Evan won’t have another surgery, either a scar revision or cosmetic surgery. We do run the risk of his eyebrows being uneven based on the pull of the current skin once the new skin gets flapped over and sealed. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we don’t, but if we do, it is a surgery we can wait to have until Evan is older (1-2 years old most likely).