Sugery Update

I mentioned last week that Noah will be going in for surgery. Here is a bit of history about it - I don't think I even went into his hearing problems before. When he was born they did the hearing test on him. He failed on both sides. They retested him before we left the hospital and he failed again. We were told to bring him back in two weeks and he would be retested. I brought him back to the hospital and they tested him yet again. This time his right ear passed but the left one failed again. We were told to make sure and mention it to his pediatrician at his two month check-up. So we did. She referred us to an audiologist and I made an appointment with him. I took Noah to see him the other week. He first ran the same test that they did at the hospital nursery - Noah failed in both ears again. He then did a more extensive test - Noah passed on the right and failed on the left with that one. After that he put us in a soundproof room and talked to Noah through speakers to see if he would respond. He responded a little when the doctor spoke to him through the speaker on the right but he didn't when he talked through the speaker on the left. He explained though that that kind of test with an infant is difficult to produce exact results since they can't exactly tell us which side they can hear better out of.

The audiologist referred us to see an ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor - he wanted to rule out fluid in the ears. That is who we went to see this past Friday. The ENT basically took one look in his ears and said he needed tubes. There is a lot of fluid built up down in the middle ear part. He used a little tool to clean out some of the build up in each ear. They are hoping with the tubes in it will help with the drainage and that hopefully that is the only reason he has failed the hearing tests. If not, Noah will be getting at least one hearing aid.

I'm not worried about the fact that he might have some hearing loss - I'm most worried about the surgery. He's so little to have to go through something like that! It shouldn't last too long (between 10 and 30 minutes), but he will have to be put under. We'll go in early on the morning of December 17th and since it's an outpatient surgery we'll be home by that afternoon at the latest as long as everything goes smoothly.