The Bionic Brother

Following in his sister's footsteps, Dominic received ear tubes yesterday.

Eddie got them at 2 years 11 months due to persistent fluid affecting her hearing, but she hadn't had a huge number of ear infections as far as we knew.  (Some may have been undetected - she had a surprise one the day of the surgery.)

Dominic got them, not because of hearing concerns, but because he kept getting whammed with ear infections this year.  March - wham! June - double wham!  July - double wham! September - wham! And there was one discovered during the surgery, even though he'd been on antibiotics for the previous one until just a few days ago.

This wasn't even during cold season!  We'd been keeping a close eye on this due to Eddie's history.  Although Dom's speech appears to be developing normally, we decided to go ahead and get his tubes as well.

So in the wee hours of the morning on October 6th, Dominic and I headed off to the hospital.

We had to check in at 7:15 for an 8:15 procedure appointment, so there was a lot of waiting.  Fortunately at the last moment I had grabbed a little toy car from the box of toys in the van, and that kept Dom entertained for about half an hour.  It was the kind you pull back and let go and it zips away.  Free in a Happy Meal a while back, it's now one of his favourite cars!

Eventually we were called to go into the back, and Dom's shirt was traded for a hospital gown.  Kid's size Large, for some reason.

He was swimming.  Once I turned the sleeves up a bit though, he didn't mind.  He was fascinated by the pulse oximeter that went on his finger, and even put it back on his own finger again after the reading was taken.

Everyone was charmed by Dominic's calm demeanor and cheerful face.  One of the nurses remembered me and Eddie from her procedure back in March, too.  He offered to take a bunch of pictures of us in our OR getups.

They said I could keep my getup for Halloween if I wanted, but I declined.

Eventually it was time to go into the back.  For Eddie, they gave her a kind of kiddie Valium to keep him calm, but for the really little guys they don't do that.  I carried him into the back and the hospital bed trundled along behind us.  Once in the OR I laid him down on it and he was strangely still and quiet, staring off to the side.  I guess it looked very different to anything else he had ever seen.  They also covered him with a couple of heated blankets, so maybe that was really cozy.

He didn't like the mask for the anesthesia, but after maybe 20 seconds that seemed much, much longer to me, he was under, and I was led away.  About ten minutes later, the front desk told me that I could move my car around to in front of day surgery for patient pickup, and once I'd done that I was brought back to see him.  He was still coming out of the drugs and was pretty unhappy at first, but he shook it off within about ten minutes, and after that was his usual cheerful self, as though nothing had ever happened.

The doctor said that he left ear had been clear but the right one had had fluid and gunk behind it, so despite having just come off a course of antibiotics he was clearly ramping up into something else.  I'm glad we got this taken care of before cold season; maybe he will have an easier time of it than he would otherwise have had.

The rest of the day was spent food shopping and running other errands.  He was totally cool with everything, and had great fun modelling his new word: "Wow!"

His hand is delving in a bag of cheese crackers - one of the best ways to keep him happy while shopping is to feed him.

I believe this one was taken mid-"Wow".

We will need to give him ear drops twice a day for the next five days, and then he has a post-op checkup in a month.  And bonus - now the next time we drive over the mountains, the changing air pressure won't bother him!