Monday, January 31, 2011

Kieran's going in for surgery

Today we went to the ENT, Kieran's speech is behind (Average is 3-50+ words, Kieran has just over 10). We were worried that her hearing was the reason for her speech. Turns out we were right her hearing is the reason for her speech issues. When the did the first test to see how her ear drum reacts it wasn't good, her left ear hardly had a reaction at all, a tiny one at the end of the the flat line, the right had a slightly better one but still not good. And the hearing in her left ear wasn't good either (they didn't test her right?!) He said she was hearing at 30 decibels and they wanted it at 15 or higher (said the lower the # the more they could hear the softer and quieter sounds) so not terribly bad but he was worried about her ear drum not reacting like it should.

Like we thought he brought up tubes. Kieran's only had 3 ear infections since September so that wasn't the worry, he said normally kids like that with fluid on their ears he would just recheck in 6 weeks when the weather warms up. What he was worried about is the fact that its affecting her hearing and her speech, because of that he's going to put tubes in. He said we'll do the tubes then a few weeks later we will check her hearing again to see if it helps. He said this kind of hearing loss is normally reversible, in 5% (I think it was) of patients it isn't.

We are waiting on authorization from insurance but once thats in we are scheduled for the surgery on the 17th of Feb. He was also sort of worried about her tonsils and adenoids, they were larger then they should be, he said medium, so not as large as Seamus' were but he wants to watch that too. He also said they will possibly take out the adenoids if the tubes alone don't help the draining (The left ear was really full, the right a little)

2 comments:

  1. PRaying the tubes work for her! all three of my kids have had tubes, bianca has had them actually 4 times now! *L* bad ear infections run in my family! I actually had so many tubes as a child they finally placed metal ones.
    *huge hugs* I hope it fixes her hearing issues too

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