Welcome!  On this page, you can learn more about my cleft.  I was born with a complete unilateral cleft lip and incomplete bilateral cleft palate.    I had my lip repairat the age of 3 months and my palate repair at the age of 8 months.  I also had a set of ear tubes placed during my lip repair.  They fell out by my 3rd birthday.

I developed a small fistula (An abnormal reopening occurring after surgical repair of the palate) Christmas, 2000.  When I had a team evaluation May, 2001, it was not big enough to worry about.  2 days before we moved, though (September, 2001), it got much bigger.  I visited my Plastic Surgeon in September, and I had surgery on December 4, 2001 to repair it.  I only had to stay in the hospital overnight.

 
  Here are pictures of Nathan's cleft at around age 3:
       

I most recently had bone graft surgery on January 10, 2006, at age 7.  I first had several months of pre-operative palatal expansion.  During this surgery, I also had a tip rhinoplasty to make my nose more even.  Here is my picture the summer before the surgery and about 2 weeks afterwards (you can even see my retainer for my palate):

I hope to not need any more future surgeries, but I will continue to have team evaluations every 2 years to monitor my progress.  I also recently got braces right before my 9th birthday on the top.  My teeth are rapidly improving as seen in a pic from spring '07 vs. a pic from spring '08:

My mom says I'm so handsome, but I don't want to be handsome.  I'm just me.