Ears, Take 1

Cole had his surgery today.  It did not go well.  Well, I take that back, it did not go as hoped.  I should have guessed today was not going to be a great day.  Shelby was up 7 or 8 times between 10:30 and 4 this morning.  I finally managed to get 2 1/2 hours of sleep in a row, at the expense of my alarm clock which apparently shut itself off this morning.  Pat called wanting to know if I was up 15 minutes before we needed to be on the road.  We were not off to a great start.  We managed to get there on time, miraculously.

The surgery process itself was fine.  Cole was a trooper.  They said he hopped up on the bed and chatted away until he was out.  They came to get us 20 minutes later.  I knew that wasn't a good sign.  Turns out the drainage in his ear isn't drainage.  He has a cyst which may be harder to remove.  They took his adenoids out, then went to suction the drainage, but kept getting chunks, instead of liquid.  So what does that mean?  He has to have a CT scan to get a look at the ear bones.  The cyst can erode the bones of the ear, so they need to check that they are ok or if they need to rebuild them.  It will also give them an idea of the placement of the cyst.  The reason they don't do the CT scan first is that drainage and cysts look the same, so they don't know what they are dealing with until they go in.  Removing it can be as simple as lifting the ear drum and scraping it out or as complicated as having to drill in the bone behind the ear to get at it.  The CT scan should give them a better idea of what they are looking at.  I'm obviously hopeful for the first option, but not terribly optimistic.  He has his scan on Friday.  I'm not sure what we are looking at for surgery #2 yet.

Coming out of surgery was no picnic.  He did well, but he was hurting and didn't know what to make of it all.  As I write this he is back to his normal self, so he bounced back quickly.  I gently broke it to him tonight that he would have to go back again, but this time they wouldn't be messing with his throat, just his ear.  He takes it all in stride like he usually does.

As far as his hearing goes, if the bones are not eroded, he should regain perfect hearing.  If they have to rebuild bones, he can come away with good hearing, but it will never be perfect.  I guess I'm just glad it's not life threatening and he still has perfect hearing in his right ear in which to ignore me with. :)