Last Thursday we brought Leif into Midwest Surgeons Center to get his ears cleaned. No, it did not require surgery but it did require him to be put to sleep. We have brought Leif into a Dr. office twice to have them clean his ears but Leif, being a typical 3 year old, does not like to be restrained at all. And when that suction hose is put into his ear he will not sit still at all. The Dr was concerned that Leif would fidget too much and the suction hose would puncture his ear drum so he recommended that Leif be put to sleep to have the rest cleaned.
So, we made an appointment. 7:00am Thursday morning Leif was going to sleep and getting his ears sucked clean. That means that Aleece and I were up at 4:00am to get ready and drop Kalven off at a friends house so we could head up to the place and be there by 6:15am. Yea, 45 min early to get paperwork done or something. Really we just sat in the waiting room playing for 40 min and did paperwork and talked to the Dr for 5 min.
Anyway, Leif went into the room to get his ears cleaned and Aleece and I got to go to a consult room to wait for the Dr. 10 min later the Dr came in and said he was done. He also said that he felt really, REALLY good about putting Leif under as there was about 4 times the amount of wax in there than he originally thought. And while Leif was under the Dr checked to make sure that his ears looked good and there was no water behind the eardrums. There was not.
After the consult we got to go back into the waiting room to wait for Leif to wake up. That took about 20ish min. When Leif was awake we got to go to the recovery room where they could tell us all of the after procedure stuff, 5 min of stuff. After waiting around for another 10 min or so to make sure Leif would not throw up we were able to leave. At this time it was about 8:30.
I had taken the whole day off and was not sure if I would go back to work the last half of the day or if I would just take the rest of the day and play. Leif was just fine, but a little groggy so I decided to just take the rest of the day and play. I wanted to make sure Aleece would not have a bad day if things went sour. They didn’t. We played the rest of the day, dancing to music, rolling on the floor, tickle wars, having lunch, watching movies. Man what a great day!
So, now it’s been a few days. What does it mean that Leif now has clean ears? Well, way back when (like 3 months ago) we wanted to get Leif hearing checked. Since he is too young for the “raise you hand at the beep” tests they have to check it by sticking a probe into his ear and looking at how his inner ear workings, work. That could not happen before because his ears were too packed. Now in 2 weeks we can bring Leif in to see if he can hear.
I am pretty sure he can. Since we have had the procedure it seems that Leif can talk a little better, he seems like he can repeat words better, and he seems to be stringing more words together at a time. He is still behind and needs school and/or therapy to get caught up but it seems like this ear thing has given him a big jump.