Stage 2 -- 3/13 The Day Before

On Tuesday, the day before surgery we went back to CA for the pre-op appointment with Dr Reinisch. Up until the morning of our trip, I was feeling pretty sick (cold symptoms but with a fever and chills) but thankfully my prayers were answered, and by that morning I was feeling miraculously better (praise God).

It was a long trip, but we made it safely and by 3:30 we were checked back into the Hollywood Orchid Suites Hotel. Unfortunately, this time we were on the 2nd floor instead of the third floor (which wasn’t quite as quiet) but it was still a great value (large suite with 2 king beds in separate rooms, full kitchen, etc for reasonable price).

We were scheduled to see Dr Reinisch at 5pm in his Camden Office. As seems to be the norm, he was running late, but we didn’t mind since we got to meet another family whose son was having stage 1 surgery the next day, and we also got to see some cute twin babies who also had an appointment with Dr R but not microtia.

We discussed with Dr Reinisch the plans for the next day. He would be making her tragus smaller (which is good since seems to be all you see now when looking at her from the front), readjust her lobe position (currently her right side is a lot lower than her left), taking some fat from her tummy (through her belly button) and putting in the indentation in her check (which he says will also help make the tragus not look as prominent), and he will be pulling back some of the skin that was grafted to the top of her inner ear to remove the hair follicles.

He explained that the skin that was grafted had already had all the hair follicles removed that they could see during stage 1, but some follicles are always dormant so you can’t find those until the become un-dormant. We had expected to have to return in April to hair the hair removed in April via laser surgery, but he was confident that this was the better way to go.

After the appointment we went out to dinner at the CA Pizza Kitchen that Dr R recommended because it was on the way back to the hotel, they're kid friendly and they have ice cream sundaes for kids.