Something tangible

Although Noah has been sick quite a bit this winter, it has been much, much better than last year. This year we are dealing with more of the fall out of him having been so sick in terms of his speech and behavior issues. He has been in speech therapy now for about 7 months and while he has made some progress, the gap between his chronological age and his expressive speech continues to grow, as does his level of frustration. When I met with his case worker from the regional center and a speech therapist from the school district a couple weeks ago, the speech therapist asked a lot of questions about his ears and hearing. His hearing was tested a year ago and we happened to catch him during a very small window of time that he had no fluid in his ears and his middle ear function was fine and there was no indication of neurological hearing loss. While that was all good news, I was warned that when he does have an ear infection, he does not hear well because of the fluid behind his ear drum and that was most likely the cause of his speech delay. Because we were in the midst of so many other appointments for him and trying to get answers on many fronts, I did not spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about his ears specifically.

This winter rolled around and our main problem has been ear infection after ear infection.....and a growing gap in his speech. So, we decided to go and see our ENT to have him evaluated again and discuss options. We have been blessed with a really good ENT who is very thorough and explains things thoroughly enough to satisfy this inquisitive mama. He explained that Noah has not had a series of ear infections, rather he has had one long one that has not cleared up in six months. During the last six months, he estimated that he has only been hearing 60-70% of normal. His middle ear function is VERY poor and he has a lot of fluid behind both ear drums. He went on to explain the purpose for tubes, most of which I already knew except for ONE key thing. For the general population, that does not have and immune system deficiency, tubes have been shown to reduce ear infections by 90%.  It most likely won't be that high for Noah because of his illness. However, (and here is the key thing I never realized), when he does get an infection, because there is a tube keeping things open, antibiotic drops can be delivered directly to the infection bypassing he need for them to run through the whole body AND they are 400-500% more potent that system meds. I have no idea why that never occurred to me before, but I'm really glad to know that.  The doctor was also very encouraging in that he seems to think that within a year, his speech should catch up to normal as long as the tubes work properly! The even better news is that the ENT's office has their own surgery center which will bypass the need to have the surgery at the hospital, which is one place you really, really don't want to take a kid with an immune deficiency.

Even though it will require minor surgery that is not without risk, John and I both feel like the potential benefits far outweigh the risks. I can't really explain how good it makes me feel to know there is something tangible, something very clear cut  that we can try to help our little guy overcome one of his many obstacles. And in the meantime, I am having to show myself grace because the mommy-guilt is wanting to set in and remind me that I "should" have moved forward with this last year and maybe we could have avoided some of this mess. But, I am choosing to focus on the fact that we honestly do the best we can do with the information we have at any given time and now there IS something in reach that we can do to help him! And it's as simple as ear tubes!