Colton's Hearing (part II)

It was over two years ago that I blogged about Colton's hearing not being great.  At the time, I was focused on his stuttering, but we also worried about his hearing.  We got him into speech therapy, which he just "graduated" from because he is totally stutter free now!  So that is exciting stuff!  His speech therapist was WONDERFUL.  I cannot sing her praises enough.

The hearing issue has been a long, dragged out process.  At the time he was tested, he had his 4-year check up coming up, so I asked them to test his ears very thoroughly, and they said he was fine.  But the doctor looked in his ears and said he had fluid in them.  She suggested we check back in again on that later.

Which of course, I never did.  (In my defense, we have terrible insurance and nothing is covered.  So I didn't really want to shell out a hundred bucks for another appointment just to look at his ears again.  It felt a little silly, especially when the doctor was saying his ears were fine.  Except for the fluid?)

Over the summer, Bentley caught swimmer's ear, so while we were at the doctor's, I had her look in Colton's ears, too.  Still had fluid.  She prescribed flo-nase or some other such thing, a nasal spray.  You can imagine how much Colton loved that.  And I couldn't tell that it did any good, so we just sort of stopped bothering with it after a short time.

Then, this winter, Colton's hearing got BAD again.  When Craig would talk to him first thing in the morning, we could tell that he couldn't understand a word that was said.  If I repeated it, then he'd get it.  I asked his speech therapist if she could test his hearing and she confirmed that he wasn't hearing stuff in the lower registers.  Once again, he had his 6-year check up on the horizon, but I was afraid I'd just get the run-around from his pediatrician again, so I felt totally stuck.

I complained about all this to my sister, and she had a brilliant suggestion: why didn't I just take him to an ENT doctor?  Skip the pediatrician as middle man!  That made perfect sense.  So I got recommendations and made an appointment.  She looked at his ears and put him on antibiotics, explained the importance of actually using the flo-nase, and also told us to use saline nasal spray, too.  She said to do all that and she'd look at him again and see if the fluid had cleared out.  We did it all for several weeks and at the next appointment, his ears were better, but there was still some fluid.  The audiologist was there to test his hearing again, and she said his hearing was fine, but there was more fluid that couldn't be seen that was making it hard for his eardrums to vibrate.  (I think this is what she said; I could be messing some of this up.)

For reasons that I still don't understand, after all that the doctor said she still didn't think he was a good candidate for tubes.  She said the antibiotics had helped a lot, and she didn't want to rush to surgery.  I give her full props for not just wanting to cut my kid open-- I'm very leery of any doctor who's knee-jerk reaction is to recommend surgery-- but I also felt like we weren't doing anything for my kid who clearly had a problem!

So then a few weeks later Colton got another ear infection.  After much internal debate, I took him back to the ENT (who miraculously had an opening-- the first appointment we made with her had to be booked a month out!) and she looked at both ears and gasped.  The one that Colton was complaining about clearly had pus in it, and she said the one that he wasn't complaining about looked like it was about to rupture!  So NOW she's ready to put tubes in and take out his adenoids.  Finally!  Let's DO something about this recurring problem!

She asked if I wanted to do a sleep study, very much leaving that decision up to me and what I thought was best.  Since Colton has been a TERRIBLE sleeper for the past three years, I said Yes.  A resounding yes, at that.  (We're going to hit our deductible anyway, so let's go whole hog!)  She explained how the sleep study works and told me the sleep center would be calling me.  She said she wanted the whole thing expedited so we could get this surgery done before he had time to develope another ear infection.

So, of course, I never heard from the sleep center.  After waiting five business days, I finally called them.  They said they had called me, but the lovely thing about cell phones is I know that's not true.  Maybe they mis-dialed?  In any case, their first opening was June 25th.  So much for hurrying the process along.  I was back to being frustrated.

Then, just a few hours after that conversation, the sleep center called again: they had a cancellation.  For that night.  Did we want it?

Now, this week is concert week, so I had dress rehearsal from 7-10.  And Craig had to cover sports at his school and fix a leaky sink at our condo.  We already had Grandma and Grandpa lined up to babysit because we had more than we could handle.  But I hated to pass up this chance...  I called Craig.  He pulled some strings at work.  We took the appointment.  I ran around packing for Colton and Craig.  Craig had a five-minute window where he stopped by the house to grab suitcases and Colton and then they headed back to his school and then on to the hotel for the sleep study. 

And Colton was GREAT for it!

A little nervous

Letting him see all the wires in the mirror

Everything is better with a stuffed animal

So. Many. Wires.

Next morning, all the wires gone and the glue washed off!

Hotel breakfast was included, so totally worth it!

Anyway, they said it should be a couple days and they'll get back to me.  Hopefully we'll be scheduling his surgery soon!  Maybe it will even help him to sleep better?