Well, Merry Christmas...Blayne!

Yesterday, John and I spent a good part of our day at the doctor with our BOYS.(still weird to write BOYS). It was an appointment for Blayne, but Bryan went along for the ride since we were leaving Savannah in charge and we felt that a newborn might be a lot for her to handle. Blayne has been having trouble hearing for a while now. He has lots of drainage, and his ears have been "plugged in" as he calls it. It has been a concern that I have brought up with the pediatrician, the school nurse and Blayne's teacher. The pediatrician had me treating it with antihistamine and prescription cough and congestion medicine. I had not really seen much success with these. Our next step was to visit the ENT to check his ears out and see what was going on. I scheduled the appointment and a week later got a call from the school nurse that Blayne had failed his hear screening at school! Good thing we had the appointment! I have also had concerns about Blayne's snoring...or whatever you want to call it when he sleeps...he makes these awful noises when he is trying to sleep, so I wanted his tonsils looked at as well. We had to wait a long time in the waiting room before being called back. He was first seen by an Audiologist. She tested his hearing, to which he failed miserably!!! He was in a sound proof little room and had headphones one. There was a microphone, so we could hear what he was saying. She would ask him to repeat words, it was obvious when she got the level of sound into his hard of hearing range, because he would either say a wrong word, say it really weird, or not respond at all! so sad! When she did the traditional test with the "beeps" in his ears, he only heard about half of them. She said that he had moderate to severe hearing loss....poor guy. She felt like the fluid attributed to most of it, and that the ENT would know what to do to fix that. We then went in to see the ENT, Dr. Bryan. He is the same doctor that removed Savannah's tonsils 7 years ago. He is a very nice doctor and we appreciate his wisdom and bedside manner. As soon as he heard Blayne speak, he said something like "he has a recognizable baked potato voice"...meaning that it sounds like he is talking around something when he speaks. Upon examining Blayne, he found that he has chronic fluid behind his ears. His ears do not drain. This fluid, is not like the fluid from ear infections, as there is no infection and no pain. He looked at Blayne's tonsils and said that they are tucked away, but that they are HUGE! Because Blayne was being so cooperative, he decided to do a move invasive look into his nose to see his adenoids. He sprayed something way up into his nose (probably Lidocaine or something similar) He then took a long skinny light and put that sucker in his nose and went adenoid hunting...Blayne laid there some calmly with the doctor looking in his nose. It made me feel weak in the stomach to watch. He found that the adenoids are HUGE and are blocking most of the back of Blayne's nose; therefore, he is always walking around with an open mouth, sleeps with his mouth open, etc. The boy can't hear and he can't breathe well from his nose!!! So, it was decided that Blayne's adenoids need to be removed and that tubes need to be placed in his ears to relieve that drainage. He said that the tonsils were debatable. They are the culprit of the snoring more than likely and might have to be removed at a later date, but we might want to going ahead and have them taken out now instead of waiting to see if they are a major cause to the problem. Although, the tonsillectomy recovery will make this a much more difficult surgery, John and I feel that it is best to go ahead and remove them now, as opposed to facing another surgery at a later date. So, our little guy gets tonsils removed, adenoids removed and tubes in on January 15th. Ironically, his friend Liam is having the same surgery on the same day!
LIAM

Well, it wasn't what he asked for, for his Christmas, but Merry Christmas Blayne, we are going to get you better!!!! On a funny note, he told the girls last night that he had Swine Flu when they asked about his appointment. He heard some of what we said and heard the word "fluid" mentioned several times, so he assumed that he had Swine Flu! Poor guy...how has he been functioning???