Journal-News.com

LIBERTY TWP. — Linda Toirac keeps track of her son's surgeries via a 14-by-9 tri-fold notepad.

Her meticulous list reached 100 entries on Aug. 14 when Dr. Charles Myer III scoped 16-year-old Tony's tracheotomy at Cincinnati Children's Liberty Campus, making sure all was well and checking to see if he needed a longer one.

Myer, vice chairman of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine's department of otolaryngology, has been operating on Tony since he was a newborn.

Tony has required surgeries since then because he was born with Treacher Collins Syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by craniofacial deformities that have required doctors to drill nose holes, connect his esophagus to his stomach, break his jaw and perform numerous ear surgeries.

"I guess his plumbing was pretty much a mess when he was born," Toirac said, noting she often scheduled two or more surgeries on the same day so her son only has to be put under anesthesia once. "The reason he had to get a trach in the first place is because his chin is real recessed and his tongue was falling back, there wasn't room for it, and blocking his airway when he would sleep."

Tony was not allowed to come home from the neonatal intensive care units at Children's Medical Center of Dayton and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center until he was 6 months old. Toirac credits prayer, both her own and that of others, for helping give her strength during those initial tough times and the ones that followed.

She asked Cincinnati Children's if she could mark the occasion of Tony's 100th surgery by having Myer perform surgery that same morning on Tony's nephews, 1-year-old twins Camden and Cayden Bledsoe, who had tubes put in their ears.

"The babies woke up from anesthesia before Tony did because he kept wanting to sleep," Toirac said. "But I think he's just a teenager — they like to sleep longer."