Friday, December 10, 2010

Tubes and Adenoids

One was put in and the other was taken out of our dear, sweet middle son. Yesterday, at an hour MUCH too early, Brian took Colten in for an ENT doctor to insert tubes in his ears and then remove his adenoids. Yes, I said that Brian took him. Yes, it killed me not to be there with my baby, but that's the nature of the beast when you have a child that needs to get ready for school and the appointment is much too early to have him go to someone else's house. Plus, the hospital has these policies that say only one parent can be with them in certain areas, so it really was ridiculous to have both of us there just so one can sit in the waiting room the whole time.
Anyway, they said he did great. I ended up getting down there just as it was time for him to come home, so I took him from Brian so he could go to work and I brought our sleepy child home to recover. They had given him some morphine before releasing him, so they said he would probably be pretty sleepy most of the day. The doctor had told me before that it would probably be the next day that he'd be back to normal. I didn't really believe him though...I know my kids.
Let's just say that one minute he was like this:
IMG_5229
And the next he was being silly like this:
IMG_5230
He went from laying on the couch and being out of it to running all over the house like a crazy child (aka - a normal day in the Steele household).
Today, you can't even tell that he had surgery yesterday. Well, except for the medicine he has to take twice a day and the ear drops we have to put in his ears 3 times a day. Yeah, not fun. For any of us.
So, now we are hoping he will be able to hear normally after this and will start talking. The lack of vocabulary is what started all this anyway...he still only has a few words mixed in with his caveman grunts. We'll be getting a referral for speech therapy so that maybe he can catch up soon. That will probably start sometime in February since his follow up appointment isn't until the end of January. I'm sure it will take care of a lot of frustration he has when we have no idea what he wants!

3 comments:

Alisha Lofgren said...

Hey Kerum, I remember Mikaela had her tubes put in in April. She used to get lots of ear infections, but since she has had them, she hasn't had one since! They work awesome! Doctor just checked on her ears this week, and they are looking good. It's hard to wash her hair, the ear plugs seem to come out easy, but we do what we can! Glad to hear it went smooth!

The MessyBlessyMomma said...

Hi Kerum, hope you don't mind if I pass your post to my cousin. She's dealing with the same situation and is very anxious! Glad Colten did AOK and is back to his normal little being!

Kerum said...

Alisha - Austin had tubes as well because of frequent ear infections. Luckily, Colten had his because there was just fluid always in there, but he was never in any pain. He obviously wasn't hearing very well, so his speech is almost non-existant! Oh, and have you tried to get the wax stuff that you can put in her ear? It might work a little better than just ear plugs. It molds to her ear and seals it really well.

Ellie, Go ahead and pass it anytime! :-) Surgery on a kid as minor as this is probably harder on the parents than it is on the kid. Colten didn't seem phased by it at all. I think age is definitely on his side though...I've heard adenoidectomies are harder the older you get.