Mallory

More about the tubes

I thought I’d share more about our decision to do tubes.

Mallory had a hearing test which she passed with flying colors. They did another little test to see how her eardrums move (it helps the doctor know how much fluid is behind the eardrums). That result was just OK – not perfect but not horrible. When we met with the ENT guy, Dr Possum Hunting (not his real name), said that her ears didn’t show any signs of permanent damage so the decision was up to us, or rather me, since my husband is on vacation working in Florida.

One of my good friends is a speech therapist and has spent time with Mallory and says that she is doing great with words and stuff so I’m not worried about that issue.

The day of her appointment, we were on day 9 of her latest 10-day round of antibiotics so you’d think her ears should be 100% clear and they should be the best they could look, right? But since they still weren’t 100% clear, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do the tubes; plus you hear all the reports that you don’t want to overuse antibiotics (and I’ll be happy to not have to have that battle every month).

So, tubes it is. It is a very quick procedure, and we’re hoping my sister can do the anesthesia. The CRNAs at our hospital are with the kids from the waiting room until they wake up, so I figured it would be comforting for Mals to have her aunt with her. She will be back to normal that evening and we can immediately resume normal activity. Dr Possum Hunting says we don’t need to do earplugs when she takes baths or goes swimming, which was something I was concerned about with our weekly swim class and living on the lake (which isn’t an issue right now seeing as how I don’t think summer will ever get here).

I think the hardest part will be that her appointment is in the afternoon and she can’t have anything to eat 6 hours before her surgery and nothing to drink 3 hours before the surgery.