Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Due to insurance coverage issues we are switching to Children's in Birmingham. It is 3 hours away, instead of 1 1/2 but that will be ok. The doctor there does not use the Latham appliance, which at first I thought would make his repair not be as good, but apparently that is not the case. One of the ladies I talked to said her doctor compared having an appliance to making surgery a home run, and without an appliance he just has to do more work during surgery to finish it out. The end results would be the same either way, and the doctor in Birmingham thinks the Latham is unnecessary risk, unnecessary trauma and unnecessary anesthesia...So I am actually REALLY ok with that. I was not looking forward to the whole experience, and it makes sense to me that you would rather do everything at one time in surgery, while they are asleep, instead of making them endure all that pain for weeks before surgery. The doctor said he has never had a cleft so wide that he couldn't fix it in a one stage repair, and Micah said it seems to him that he must be really good at what he does if he does not need an appliance to rely on as a crutch. They also have the exact comprehensive team that Atlanta does, so we aren't losing anything in that regard either.
Anyway, I am leaving this afternoon to travel to Birmingham and stay overnight since our appointment tomorrow is at 8AM. It will basically be just like the one in ATL where we will meet with all the doctors because they have to make their own evaluation of Judah. They told me yesterday that we are looking at the end of February for surgery, maybe earlier if they have a cancellation...Kind of sad that we have been waiting and waiting to hear from Atlanta with no clue as to when surgery would be, and in one phone call to Birmingham they were able to give me a time frame. So, basically I will just treat the appointment tomorrow like a 'second opinion' and I'm sure it will be relatively easy since we have been through this before and know what to expect...just very, very long, it took 6 hours the last time! I will update tomorrow and let everyone know how it goes. All in all, I guess I am just sticking to 'everything happens for a reason', and I think this will turn out to be a very good change.