Surgery Day

Recently we found out that Grif could not hear very well. We knew that his speech was behind but we didn't exactly know why. We took in for some testing early in June at the Early Education Center and they tested him to see where he was at compared to other 3 year-olds. He had a great time and he did very well on the following directions and understanding portion. In fact he was 3-4 levels above average. Which wasn't surprising because he is probably our best listener. But his speaking and communication skills were 3-4 levels below average. So they did a tympanogram and he failed on both ears. So we tested him again at his 3 year-old well check. This time he failed one ear and marginally passed the other ear. We still didn't know what was causing this yet so we needed to get more testing before he started Preschool and and worked with the Speech Language Pathologist.

Finally I got him in to see an ENT specialist and low and behold he failed the test again so they performed the infant hearing test. He failed those miserable too. So the long story short is he couldn't hear everything like we do because there was so much fluid behind his eardrums he heard everything like he was under the water. That explains his closed mouth guttural speech. That is what we all sounded like to him. So luckily there was a cancellation that just came in and he was able to be scheduled for surgery to fix is problem quickly.

Easy enough fix he just had to have tubes placed in his ears to drain all of the annoying fluid. We still didn't know if this was going to fix everything but it was our first try. The day of the surgery daddy got to come with and it was such a blessing. We needed him. Once they gave Grif the sleepy meds he just got silly. He was laughing and hiccuping and playing with his funny blue hat. they took him away and before we even got to talk to the Dr. again we could hear him screaming on the other side. He didn't think this was so funny anymore. He continued to scream and bite and spit for a long time so we finally go permission to just take him outside. He wanted nothing to do with the hospital anymore. He recovered quite quickly through the rest of the day.


We had his follow-up apt the next week and he passed all of his tests with flying colors this time. We already knew that he was hearing better since he has stopped us to figure out what is making such strange noises all around him. He heard a bird out back and the ceiling fan in his room for the first time. I felt so bad but now I am just happy that he can hear and we didn't have make him suffer unknowingly any longer. Now he gets overstimulated and we have to quiet things down. Which is just fine with mom!