Just a wee bit of a difference!

A few months back, we attended a cleft palate clinic with our son, where he was run through a gamut of tests and specialist interviews. He has a submucous cleft which, while really cool to look at, causes him to have to work really hard to form certain sounds, and in some cases, to compensate for a simple inability to make said sounds. He was seeing a speech therapist for awhile, and his speech improved drastically as he learned compensating skills. But that stopped after the clinic, as we were told that he would have surgery sometime this summer. I guess his therapist figured it was no real use seeing her until after the surgery, as he will likely have to learn to talk again with the new mouth structure.
We were thrilled that he would be having the surgery, especially in that time frame, as that would give him time to recover and learn how to talk again before he hit elementary school (he will start kindergarten in 2009).
WELL....we received to official letter saying he was put on the waiting list as of May 29th yesterday. Oh, good, we thought, his surgery should be coming up soon, then. The letter came with a number to call to find out what wait time we were to expect. So I called it. Got the automated answering service, left all pertinent info it asked for...and waited. They called back this morning to let me know his wait time is approximately 15 to 18 MONTHS. We are not amused. I am very upset, because this means his surgery will not take place until he is IN kindergarten, which is going to make it harder for him to fit in, especially when he's going to have difficulty talking for who knows how long, plus he'd probably miss some school....in his first crack at French Immersion...and I may not even be around for his surgery, as I have that International competition in October 2009 (moved from November because it would have clashed with the Country Music Awards).
I wish they had let us know right up front that we were looking at that kind of wait instead of telling us this summer! I understand, to a certain extent, I mean, obviously, there are children whose cases are much more urgent than ours, cancer kids and such...I don't begrudge them that....I just wish they had said it would be a long wait to start with, as Son was very disappointed, too, having had the surgery talked up so that he was prepared for it this summer.
But hey, what can you do. Now we wait and I guess hope they are wrong and the surgery happens sometime while he is still in preschool.