Surgery for Annie

Well, today was Annie’s appointment with Dr. Amelia Drake, the ENT that Dr. Anne Stephens (Annie’s Physician) has the most confidence in. The situation is this: Leia has had four ear infections within the last two months. With each infection (with the first one being the most serious because we had no idea she had one, . . . Annie’s just that good of a baby) she has been medicated to a higher degree with antibiotics; therefore, she is either medicated or has an infection. Today her ears looked just as they did last week, “angry, but not normal.” When I asked them what that meant, they said that she still has some fluid in her ears that has no way to drain out, so it needs to be reabsorbed. This takes an incredibly long time, so she just keeps getting infection after infection. It is no surprise that Dr. Drake almost immediately suggested putting tubes in Annie’s ears, a diagnosis that Brian and I were totally ready to hear. We had been doing lots of research about tubes vs. alternatives and, thanks to two very good friends (thank you Ashley and Hollis) who both have children with tubes, we found that alternatives take time to try out. Time that could involve infection after infection again, and this time with hearing loss. Both highly recommended the procedure. And that was the deciding factor for us. And through it all, Annie just sat there happily for the entire day. Being poked and prodded. Being shuffled to one part of the hospital to the next. Everything seemed to be more draining on Mamma. Eventually we had her hearing tested (to be sure there wasn’t hearing loss from her first infection). This was at my request, because otherwise I always would have wondered.

Let me just stop here for a second to mention how really neat this hearing test was. We went into a little soundproof room with these black windows on the left-hand side. Annie was supposed to look straight forward (there were a couple of toys sitting there to keep her attention) until she heard a sound coming from those black windows, then she was supposed to look toward the sound. The four black windows contained these little mechanical stuffed animals that only lit up when the child looked toward the sound. Well, once Annie figured out that she could see a roaring lion, a walking rhino, and the ever-famous cymbal-playing monkey as a reward for following a sound, . . . she looked every time. I could tell just by holding her during the test that she had perfect hearing. Thank God.

Anyway, I asked all these questions about the surgery. A few of them were: How long do the tubes stay in? (About 1 year.) Why don’t the tubes affect hearing? (Because it’s a tiny hole, not a large hole.) What happens if she gets another infection before the surgery? (Go ahead and medicate her again, or just wait because we’ll drain it during the surgery anyway.) Because Annie is currently Dr. Drake’s youngest patient, she will be the first surgery on July 6 (which was as early as we could make it). We already went through the pre-care procedure today, so we don’t have to return until the day of the surgery.

I also have to say that we remembered the ENT office very well because we were there last year when Leia Rose “made a table of bird seed” in her ear. Leia actually had to have the same surgical experience to have the seed extracted that Annie will have to have to have tubes inserted. Anyway, quite a few of the staff remembered us (which I couldn’t believe) because they loved Leia so much, . . . and now they all fell in love with Annie too. At least that made it a quasi-pleasant experience. Then at the end I wanted to go up to the special wall where they pin up each item they have taken out of children’s ears since 1970. Lots of coins, lots of buttons, some egg shells, a Barbie shoe, a pop top, . . . and there was Leia’s bird seed.