Here We Go Again!

Emma had an appointment on Friday with her ENT. He scheduled her for surgery for this morning. We farmed out the other kids (thanks everybody!) and got to Ogden just before 8am. She had her fourth set of tubes put in her ears. According to the doctor we are "frequent fliers" there. Emma's response to the question,  "how are you?" was cute, she said, "Awesome!" She did great and is doing well. Today we kept her happy until it was her turn by taking pictures. Here are a few of them.

 Getting her bracelet with her name on it and her new stuffed Surgical Center animal, a monkey.

 She answered her pain scale with a picture of a smiley face. Then she drew one. And added a tongue.

 She stayed in her pajamas all day, because she thought that was special.

 She was being silly in the wagon and at the end of the hall the anesthesiologist asked her how old she was as she disappeared around the corner without even realizing it, because she was deep in conversation. The doctor later told us that when she got into the surgical room, she got out of the wagon and climbed up on the the table without being told to. She knows the drill!

Waiting in the recovery room for the anesthesia to wear off. The Motrin had also kicked in. (And mom packed some cool things in her bag.)

We saw it coming. She is involved in two different speech programs and had been doing great. Lately she has been signing way more. Sign was her communication for long enough that it is still often present during daily life. It is still helpful to decipher between words that sound similar (and the more we use sign, the more Laura picks up too). But I'm talking about way more. Like not hardly talking and trying to get away with only signing! The amount of signing she is doing is a huge indicator to me of how her ears are doing.

About two months ago, she had a tympanogram test done, it "draws a picture" of the pressure in the ear canal. It normally should look like a mountain. Unless tubes are in place, then it should flat line because there is no pressure. This particular time the test did make a small peak, which told me she had grown out her tubes and so I scheduled an appointment for her ears to be cleaned. A few weeks later when the ear doctor (the E part of ENT) cleaned out all the wax and old tubes he said he wanted a hearing test done again. By then she was plenty upset (and Laura's ears were cleaned out that same visit, and she was done being there too), so we scheduled to come back the next week. For that visit the tympanograms were a little lower and the hearing test done in the sound booth was way below normal range. Neither ear was good, but the right ear was worse than the left. When the doctor checked her ears she had another infection. That day the doctor gave her the strongest antibiotic she has ever been on (and she has been on more than her fair share). Another two weeks later we did a follow up tympanogram to find the left ear low and the right ear with a flat line- without tubes in that is not a good thing. The speech program she is in at USU has their grad students do this tympanogram test each semester for the experience. I got it approved to do this follow up at the University, so we didn't have to go down to Ogden. So, the grad student is thinking she is doing the test wrong and keeps retrying it. She eventually went and got one of the Audiologist professors and he did it a few times too. Then he asked me about her history and after hearing a very abbreviated version of what she has been through, he accepted the flat line as a true result of so much fluid that the ear drum can't move to send back a pressure reading (no movement also means no hearing). Now, because of this test, I know the medicine didn't clear out the fluid in her ear, so I scheduled another appointment with the ENT, which takes us to last Friday.
Today he cleaned out all the yucky liquid from the infection and old scabs from the healing process of the third tubes. He really hopes this could be her last set. (If not the next set takes two separate surgeries.)
 
She was already more talkative and happy today! We went to visit Lee's grandpa tonight. She still had her pajamas on, so I asked her to tell great grandpa about where she went. She told him about going to Baby Animal days for her class field trip two weeks ago. She wasn't really phased by the surgery.