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Christopher

(Chrismeister ^1^)

Christopher was born on May 1, 1992

Christopher was born with a moderately severe unilateral cleft of the lip, gum and hard and soft palates.

Chris has had lip closure, hard and soft palate repair, tip rhinoplasty, lip revision, bone graft and several ear tubes.

I cannot show you pictures of Christopher immediately after surgeries as his father did not want them taken.  He was afraid to put too much emphasis on the clefting.  What I can offer, however, is a small family album of Chris which, I think, will serve almost as well.

 

 

We were lucky to get Christopher's birth picture from the hospital.  Here he is at 2 days old.

 

 

Chris age 4 months.  Even then he liked to

hang out with Mama!

 

I've never been able to get the hue and saturation correct on this.  Here is Chris at age 14 months, just after hard and soft palate repair.

Notice the crooked. little nose.  It got lots of kisses!

 

 

Chris age 3.  Here you can see a little better how his lip repair turned out.  At this stage his nose is pretty straight.

 

This is where he got his nickname that Joanne Gave to him.  His team was the Westerville Angels and his Jersey number was #1.

Age 5

 
 

One of my favorite pictures of Chris taken on his 7th birthday.  Here the nose is a little crooked but look!  A beautiful, full, upper lip!

 
 

 

Chris age 9.  Chris goes to a private school for bright children with learning differences.  Chris is ADD and dysgraphic.  That is, he can read very well but has difficulty putting his thoughts to paper and in the actual mechanics of writing.

Ummmmmmmmmmm  he's looking at the "used car" section of the newspaper.  Not until you're older, Chris!

 
 

Chris age 10.  What a pair!

 
 

The quintessential Chris at age 11.  Yes, that's a wild duck.

 
 

Chris on his 12th birthday!  Dad looks a little goofey, but we won't tell him.

Taken at Red Lobster.  Chris ate two lobster tails, 1/2 pound of crab legs, scampi, fries, broccoli and a bowl of Gumbo.  He then started in on my dinner.  Did I mention he had dessert?

Notice that here his nose is a little crooked.  The next picture, taken about 12 weeks later shows it better.

 
 

Nashville, Tennessee at Bibi King's restaurant.  Here is a good shot of what his nose looks like right now.  Lovely braces!

The scarring on his lip is not noticeable and his lip continues to relax and gain in fullness.

 
 

Chris still has an under bite.  Doctors are still not sure which route we will be taking but he is responding very well to the braces.  Most of his teeth are now positioned correctly.

 

Just for fun: Click here for a .wav file (268K) of Chris!

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