Laid Back Weekend & A New ENT

Sometimes you just need to have a weekend that is laid back and have little to nothing planned. That's exactly what we did this weekend and it felt so good. Brent and I each had one thing to do on Saturday and they happened to be at the same time but that was all. Thank goodness because it feels like we've been running ragged ever since Christmas.

It felt so good to just stay home and decompress so to speak. We laughed and played with the kids mostly and lounged around. We had some good and much needed family time!

Now, onto the ongoing saga with Peyton's poor ears. For those of you who don't know, he had his first ear infection last January at 7 months old. There were no signs other than a fever that was 100.1 one minute and 104.5 thirty minutes later and of course he wouldn't stop crying. Other than that, there was no pulling on the ears or anything that is normally associated with an ear infection. We ended up in the ER & put on antibiotics of course, 5 days later we had a follow up with our Pediatrician, the infection hadn't improved at all and was actually a bit worst. It took 3-1/2 weeks for us to get the infection to clear.

We last saw our Pediatrician on a Monday and Wednesday we saw the ENT, the following Monday we went in and had tubes put in. It was amazing, he was doing wonderful, his ears were normal color and had no infection whatsoever...until July. Here it is, January and every month since July except for November he has had an ear infection in either one or both ears. That's 5 ear infections in almost 7 months, the average that is considered acceptable for children with tubes is 1-2 infections a year as long as the tubes are still functioning properly.

We went back to our original ENT after seeing the Pediatrician and being put on antibiotics who basically blew my concerns off. This was in August so he had already had 2 infections since his tubes were placed. He told me that the tubes were open and allowing fluid to flow away from the ear drum and drain out of the ear canal and that antibiotics are clearing the infection so there was basically nothing he could do. I thought, ok maybe this is normal. I had no clue, Avery, at that point was 2-1/2 and had only had 2 ear infections her whole life so I was flying blind so to speak as to what was considered normal for a child with tubes. Of course after this visit we had 3 more infections.

Our Pediatrician has been great through the whole ordeal and understood how frustrated I was getting. Finally in December after having to take him to an Urgent Care because the pediatrician's office couldn't get him in for an appointment and his fever was at 104 and wouldn't budge with tylenol or motrin I called the Pediatrician's office and requested a referral to a new ENT. This time I requested the ENT that I saw when I was younger, before Brent and I got married, several of my friends and family see him and he has done sinus surgery on my mom twice so I know how good he is and really like his bedside manner. He is the kind of doctor that you rarely find, has awesome bedside manner and is an amazing doctor that will go to whatever extent he has to to figure out what's going on and make you better. Plus, he and his wife have either 4 or 5 kids themselves so that is also an advantage, he's great with kids. His wife was actually going to be my OBGYN when I got pregnant with Avery but she decided to take leave and stay home with their munchkins.

His office called within a few hours of our Pediatrician faxing the referral form over and we set up an appointment. The appointment was a week and a half ago and I immediately felt like he felt my concern as soon as I started going through the history of the infections. Already he had done more than the original ENT did for us, he listened. When I would talk about my concern with the first ENT he wouldn't even let me finish talking, he'd interrupt me and basically tell me what was happening was completely normal and there's nothing more he could do. He never spent more than 5 minutes in the room with us and I felt like he was always rushing us. The new ENT took his time with Peyton, he doesn't like his ears being messed with and with as much pain as he's been through with these infections I don't blame him. It was just a completely opposite experience than we had been having which was refreshing and I actually felt some relief.

Finally, we got some answers! It's actually his adenoids and tonsils that are causing all of the problems. Obviously the solution is to have them removed but he is still too young to have his tonsils taken out because he needs to be able to drink out of a regular cup without a straw since he won't be able to suck on a straw or sippy cup with the stitches on his tonsils. Right now the game plan is to try to wait as long as we can to hopefully do both procedures at once so we don't have to put him under anesthesia for a third time. However, if he continues to get ear infections like he has been we will go ahead and do the procedures seperately. If that's what has to happen then we'll do it, it's in God's hands.

He also wanted to doing a hearing test to see if the infections has affected his hearing as well as his speech development because he has a speech delay. We did the hearing test last Tuesday and it showed that his hearing will allow for adequate speech and language development. They still wanted to refer us to a speech therapist so we should be hearing from them to schedule an in-home evaluation soon. I'm a bit nervous about that because I don't know what to expect.

Other than that things are silent, healthwise that is, in the Allison house which makes this mama very happy!