Ears

Well I debated whether to even post this yet but I figured with all the prayer warriors out there it might be worth it. For us, this is also a big event in our journey of parenthood so I think its important to document.

As many of you know, we finally had our ENT appointment on Wednesday. It was at one of the specialty clinics in Children's Hospital. Ben was still out of town for work, so I went by myself. When we first got there, I was totally overwhelmed by the amount of people in the waiting room.  There were at least 20 adults and tons of children running everywhere. My first thought was "Oh my gosh, we are going to be here all day."  And that thought proved to be accurate.  Our appointment was at 2:30 and we didn't even go back to see the doctor until close to 5. Oh well, when we got back there, the doctor and audiologists were fabulous so it was well worth the wait.  

 Mary Hyatt was so good the entire time... well until about the last 30 minutes waiting.  Then she got a little cranky, but I didn't blame her. I was cranky by that point too. :) 

I was so glad that I brought her stroller in.  I'm usually not very cautious when it comes to germs and MH. If something drops on the floor, sometimes I'll just blow it and hand it to her; and I've never been too picky about letting people hold her or making sure people wash their hands constantly.  But for some reason, I did not want her touching anything or anybody in the waiting room.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't dirty or anything..it was actually very nice; but with all the children and people everywhere, I could just see the germs. Mary Hyatt did love watching all of the children though.  I could tell she wanted to be able to run around with them. One little girl colored a picture and brought it over to us and said "This is for the baby." haha It was a picture of Snow White.  She was so cute. 

Anyway, after we were called back, an audiologist came and got us and took us to test Mary Hyatt's hearing. Ben and I have actually been slightly concerned about this ever since her 6 month appointment because we've noticed that she isn't babbling much.  She does make sounds all the time but just doesn't produce any consonant-vowel combinations. The audiologist did two different tests on her.  After she was finished she came and told me that Mary Hyatt's results indicate that she is testing outside of normal limits.  I think by that point, with everything that has been going on lately and the fact that I was so tired from waiting so long and working to entertain MH, that piece of news was just the last straw and I lost it.

We met with the ENT after that and he reassured me that because Mary Hyatt does still have fluid in her right ear, that may have affected the hearing tests.  He told me that right now everything may sound muffled like she is under water all the time, but after she gets the tubes hopefully that will improve.  We went ahead and scheduled her to get the tubes tomorrow morning.  After the tubes procedure, they are also going to perform some test that will assess her brain wave responses to auditory stimuli to give us more information on her hearing, and then 2-3 weeks later we will go back to retest.

I know that getting tubes is such a routine procedure and that it literally takes about 5 minutes for them to do, but the thought of them taking my sweet girl away from us and putting her to sleep at such a young age is still a little frightening.  Not to mention, we have to be there at 5:45 in the morning and she won't go back until close to 8, but won't be allowed to eat anything during all of that time. Eek! So, we would appreciate all the prayers we can get that our morning spent entertaining a hungry MH before she goes back goes well, the whole procedure and recovery goes smoothly with no complications, and prayers that we will get a good report regarding the auditory brain wave test and that our follow up tests indicate that her hearing will be back to normal with these tubes. Thank you all!

And just for kicks, here are a couple of pictures. This one was taken Sunday  at the after hours clinic before we found out she had another ear infection..

And this one was taken today at my work.  I took Mary Hyatt with me and made a pallet on the floor of my office. She had so much fun and LOVED getting all the extra attention from everybody!