2 out 1 in.

I have to say Phoebe breezed through her operation on Wednesday. It took 2.5 hours to take the forehead and right cheek expander out and 'advance the skin' (as it is known). An impressive amount of nevus was removed. The left cheek had a new expander put in but at the same time there was also enough new skin (created by the leaky expander) to excise a fair amount of nevus there too. So all was not lost there afterall.

As for Phoebe's face bothering her, she seemed oblivious to it. Phoebe never fails to amaze us. The Dr asked us to keep Phoebe quiet for 4-5 days post-op while things settled. However, unless they gave us a sedative, then that was going to be mission impossible. Phoebe seems to have more energy than usual. 30 hours after her op Phoebe was jumping on her little indoor trampoline and had so much energy we thought she would burst. We decided she had never fallen off in the last year, so it was safe to let her continue jumping. If, however, anything did happen and she fell off we agreed we would not tell the surgeon what she had been doing! Phoebe is sleeping right through the night and shows no (behavoural or otherwise) signs of the facial trauma she has been through.

This is only the first step on about a 5 step process. After 3 weeks respite we are back into weekly expansions of the right cheek. Am sure things will be easier this time with just one little expander to worry about. When the left expander is finally removed the idea (currently) is to put 1 or 2 expanders in Phoebe's neck to grow some skin for her nose, eyebrows and lower eye lids.