The Ears…
Little M is going to be the death of me. Seriously, that girl on drugs…I am exhausted from trying to keep her alive yesterday! Let’s just say that drugs make her think she can do things she cannot, like trying to slide down the center of the dining room table. She is also hilarious…She says the funniest things when she is drugged, so that helped. Ha.
She did super well yesterday, we were so proud of her. She makes this process seem easy!
She had her tubes put in, and the surgeon was able to get the bigger better tubes into both ears, which is great.
Not so happy news is that while this may help a little bit, her hearing will still not be great…
He found that the little ear, the one he was thinking might be more time-consuming, was easy to get the tube into. But when he went to do the other ear, her big ear, he found that the ear drum was completely scarred and almost impossible to get the tube into, since the scarring made the ear drum so hard. He did get it in, but because of the scarring, that ear drum will never be able to move and vibrate, so hearing will never be perfect in that ear. Bummer, since that is supposed to be her good ear!
(There was tv, so little M was pleased…also, she had drunk the happy juice by this time, so she could have been watching court tv, and she still would have been this pleased.)
We were also able to talk to her doctor about the results from her CAT scan, which showed that a small bone was missing from the inner ear on her small ear. When she was tested before, it was found that she had conductive hearing loss in one ear…this explains which ear (and the ear we thought it would be). There is really not anything to be done about this, but it helps her doctors to understand and her therapists to teach her how to compensate, since the hearing will never be perfect in that ear.
So hearing will not ever be perfect in either ear… What we will decide now is if it needs to be perfect. Is it good enough for speech development? Would she benefit from a hearing aid at least in her big ear? Will she still be able to hear out of her big ear with all of that scar tissue?
I am disappointed… poor little M. Instead of coming home with great hearing, we came home with more questions and more doctor appointments looming in her future.
I know she will handle it with the cheerfulness and grace with which she greets all doctor appointments, but I would really love for her to not have to.
For now, as the swelling goes down over the next day or two, I am just hoping that her hearing is at least better than it was, and she didn’t go through all of that for nothing.
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She certainly is a cute & happy patient. I'm sorry her procedure brings additional questions and more appointments. Prayers for your sweet family.
It can be hard to get more and more questions instead of more and more answers. Thinking of you all and praying for Little M!Michelle