Tubes

As all 5 of our frequent readers may know, Avery suffered her 5th ear infection over the Thanksgiving holidays.  After being back a few days, I had this nagging feeling that we should go ahead and take her in to see an ENT to get a second opinion about going ahead with a myringotomy.  After discussing this with M, I called and was able to get an appointment for the week after Thanksgiving.  I was able to get the first appointment of the day, 7:45 am, which ended up being a blessing, because when I left the office 2 hours later the waiting room was packed.  Avery first had to do a hearing test and check for fluid in her ears.  The audiologist told me that both ears had fluid build up and that she was performing a little below normal on her hearing reaction times, which surprised me. I have never noticed her having problems hearing us before, and she has definitely not had any trouble developing language.

We saw the Nurse Practitioner first, who after taking a brief history, took a look into her ears.  She asked me as she was looking when her last ear infection was, to which I replied a week and a half ago and that she had just finished her antibiotic 5 days earlier.  She said, "Wow, that's amazing, because she has another one in her left ear... it is bulging with pus."  I literally about fell out on the floor in the exam room. At this point, I was over it and just wanted our sweet baby girl to get some relief.  After seeing the doc who reiterated everything the NP said, she needed tubes and she needed them ASAP.  His nurse came to schedule the surgery and told me that the NP had asked how soon we could get in for surgery because her ears looked so terrible, and the nurse told her it wouldn't be until January.  The NP basically begged the nurse to find something/anything because she needed them so badly :(  So, surgery was scheduled for 2 days later; his nurse just decided to overbook him, which was so very nice of her.

Fast forward to surgery day, we were thankfully the first case of the day for our doc and got to the outpatient center at 6AM.  Now, being a former OR nurse, I know how routine this surgery is.  I know that it takes all of 5 minutes, that they don't even have to intubate, just mask them down, etc. etc.... That being said, also being an OR nurse, I know risk exists for every single procedure, albeit a very small, teeny, tiny, minuscule risk.  It didn't help that we were able to carry Aves to the OR door and hand her off to a a tech who was to carry her to surgery.  Broke my heart as she kept reaching out for us, saying, "Mommy? Daddy?" as she was carried down the hallway.  Bless her bones.  Doc came by 10 minutes later to tell us she was great and already in recovery.  He asked, "Has she been sleeping?"  I told him she has always slept fine except when she has had a fever with an ear infection.  To which he replied, "I really don't know how, her ears looked terrible."  All in all, she did great, and was mostly upset after surgery because she was so hungry ;)

All that being said.  We are so thankful that it is now done and that this will hopefully prevent our baby girl from getting sick so often.  Now we can look forward to a sick-free (fingers-crossed) Holiday season!

So thankful to Children's Hospital for having so many toys to play with while we waited in pre-op.  She got to ride this around the hallways!

Home and happy that she was finally getting something to eat!