Life as a Leach

Our Ent just came to visit.  He said intubation was perfect doing it our special way.  Her right ear looked good, even though that was the one that multiple doctors thought was sideways.  The left ear has a sizable hole in it, which will probably need to be fixed in the future.  He's really not sure why she's having such hearing and speech issues, based on what he saw.  So...he will test her hearing in December and go from there.   He went back to check and see how the jaw was going.  She should be done fairly soon.

Who knew that these ears were going to start such a whirlwind of phone calls?!? I called our ENT's office this morning to let him know about the ear tubes and ask if there would be any way to fix them during next week's g-tube revision.  In his wonderful  way, Dr. T. called me back himself in less than an hour (seriously, I love this doctor!  He is only second to Dr. S., her pediatrician!).  We talked a lot about Abby's rib surgery and recovery, and he was concerned about her need for post-operative oxygen, since she had never needed it before.  His feeling was that she needed more time to recover before putting her under again.  He emailed her surgeon and I gave the office a call as well. Again, within an hour, a third surgeon joined in on the conversation.  This time, it was the jaw surgeon who works closely with Dr. T.  Dr. T. had called him because he was wondering if the oxygen requirement proved that Abby needed the jaw surgery sooner ra...

Abby has been losing speech sounds and asking us to repeat what we say a lot.  Since she doesn't have an audiology appointment until December, I had the pediatrician check her out.  Turns out, her tubes are sideways in her ear canal, blocking her ear drum!  Yikes.  They aren't being very helpful that way and are actually causing trouble, so they need to come out.  I'm going to call tomorrow to see if they can remove and replace them during her g-tube closure next Thursday.  This will be her 4th set of tubes in 2 years.  I kind of doubt if that will all work out to get it taken care of next week, but a girl can dream! In other, but related, news...I found my first gray hair the other day.  I named it Abby.