Keep Thou My Feet: Kevin's ear tubes

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Kevin's ear tubes

On Monday, March 2nd, Kevin had his ear tube surgery. It went well. We talked to him about it quite a bit the night before so he would know what to expect. I was a little worried about him not being able to eat anything in the morning, but when Heidi asked for breakfast he said, "No breakfast for me! Not until after my surgery." So we didn't really have to deal with keeping him from eating food. We decided it would work better for Ryan to take him since Ann Marie is still nursing and I thought it might be better for me to stay home with her. So Ryan and Kevin took the bus to the hospital and arrived at the children's hospital at 8:15 (which was when they told us Kevin had to arrive, even though the procedure was scheduled for 9:45). Ryan said they could have arrived at 9:15 and it would have been fine because they didn't do anything until a little bit before the surgery.

Apparently there were about ten other kids there for the same procedure. It's a really common procedure for little kids, although usually it's for younger kids.

After waiting in the waiting room for an hour and a half a nurse took Kevin and Ryan to a prep room. They waited there for a while and were visited by two nurses, one doctor, one surgeon (with med school student in tow), the ear, nose and throat specialist who would actually do the procedure, and two anesthesiologists. They all explained what they were going to do and then the anesthesiologists took Kevin to the operating room.

The surgery was pretty quick. Kevin was probably only under general anesthesia for about 20 minutes. Fifteen minutes after they took Kevin back, the doctor came back out to tell Ryan that it went well. Then soon after that someone came to tell him that Kevin was awake and he could go back and see him. The doctor said there was a lot of fluid and goop in Kevin's ears.

Kevin had some apple juice and a graham cracker and was ready to go home soon after he woke up. They took him down to the doors in a wheelchair. The nurse asked where they were parked, and she was pretty surprised when Ryan said they were just going to ride the bus because we live nearby. Apparently that never happens. Ryan carried Kevin down to the bus stop and they rode home.

When he got home Kevin was a little more subdued than usual, but he looked just fine. Apparently the nurse told him not to take the cotton out of his ears until he got home, so as soon as he walked in the door he took them out and plopped them in my hand . . . so kind of him. :) He had a couple of pieces of lasagna and several cups of juice. He did rest some more on the couch after that, but by the evening he was his usual self and you would never have guessed that he had surgery that morning.

My visiting teachers were kind enough to bring us dinner and a pinwheel for Kevin, which was a big help to me because Ryan had to work late that day. It was nice to be able to focus on taking care of Kevin without worrying about getting dinner made.

It does seem like Kevin is hearing better. At OT his therapist saw a big difference in just the first few minutes. He doesn't ask us to repeat ourselves as much as he was before. We still need to work on his auditory processing, but at least now he can actually hear us, which makes a difference. He's still getting used to the way it feels when he sniffs since the tubes allow air to come into his ears, but other than that he doesn't even notice they're there. I'm really glad we went through with the surgery and I think this will really help him with school and everything else he needs to do. In retrospect he's probably been dealing with mild hearing loss for most of the school year.

I do feel like hearing better has caused Kevin to struggle a little with regulating himself. I think he's still figuring out how to process the extra noise. He's been bumping into things on purpose more lately (it gives him proprioceptive input) and acting up more, and he gets upset at disappointments a lot more easily. But we can work through that.

Here is Kevin in the waiting room.