Aaron's surgery

The reason for Aaron's ear surgery:

He's struggled with his hearing off and on for his whole life. He's failed multiple hearing screenings at school, and we've had him tested over and over.  About a year ago he failed yet another hearing screening and I took him to the school district audiologist. He failed that test too, so we went to our ENT (Ear Nose and Throat doctor). He failed there too.  He's quite deaf in his right ear but his left ear is perfectly good so he compensates.  He compensates well enough that I have never noticed that he can't hear and if it weren't for the school screening tests we wouldn't have even known.

The doc recommended we come back in 6 months, and check again. He failed again. For some strange reason, for the first time ever, it occurred to me to mention that my mom is profoundly deaf in both ears and, "could Aaron's problems be genetic?"  Durrrr.  Why, why, why did it never cross my mind to mention this?  She has Otosclerosis. Our doctor (who is also her doctor) felt that there was a strong probability that Aaron had Otosclerosis too, but the only way to know what to do exploratory surgery.

So on the Thursday of Spring Break we went to down to UVRMC. They had him change out of his clothes into a nifty hospital gown, which he really loved. (har de har har.)  He got an iv and they inserted the needle wrong on the first try causing him a lot of pain, so they yanked it out and tried again.  The second time was the charm.

The surgery lasted about two hours and didn't go as well as we had hoped He does not have Otosclerosis. Once the doctor got inside his ear he could see that there were some congenital defects that couldn't be fixed.  In the process he did replace the middle bone with a prosthesis bone. The doctor took some tissue from above Aaron's ear to fix a problem with the opening between the middle and inner ear. He also took some cartilage from the nobby thing in the ear to help with the surgery reconstruction.

His equilibrium was messed up for a day or two, causing extreme dizziness. But by the third day he was mostly better. He will get the stitches out this Friday when we go for his two week post-op check.  We are hoping that his hearing will at least be at the level that it was before the surgery.

If not, we hope that his left ear will continue to carry the load.

Don't look at the picture below if pictures of stitches gross you out......

2 Comments

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Poor kid! I hope this helps him.

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Stitches really gross me out...

But I'm really hoping he'll be healed and all better.

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