My Kids And Their Ears

Rylie and Bryce both had follow up appointments at the ENT on Monday. Rylie got a thumbs up after a little bit of what can only be described as torture, but Bryce wasn’t so lucky.

The doc checked Rylie’s ears first. He could tell that her tubes were out, but her ears were filled with wax so he said he wanted to clean them out after he dealt with Bryce. (I’ll come back to Bryce in a minute.) Well Rylie didn’t hear him say that and she thought she was done. You can imagine how upset she got when he asked her to come lay up on the table. Poor kid. She got so scared. You see, my kids have both had so many problems with their ears. Add to that the fact that they are both “waxy kids” who have had to get their ears cleaned out several times, and trust me, that is NO FUN.

So we get Rylie on the table, and even though she was crying hysterically, she was being still. I have no idea why there were three nurses holding her down. I was holding her hands and I think one nurse would have been just fine, but whatever. He looked through a microscope and pulled these HUGE chunks of wax out of her ears. Seriously, I don’t know how the kid could even hear. I guess the tubes had fallen out and were just sitting there collecting wax. Anyway, her ears look great according to the doctor. She goes back in four months for a hearing test and as long as that comes back good, she will be released from his care. Yay!

The news about Bryce isn’t so great. His ears started draining over the weekend, so I knew he had yet another ear infection. Unlike Rylie, the tubes aren’t helping him. Well, I guess they are at least allowing the crap to drain so it isn’t all sitting in his ear drum making him miserable. The doctor has no idea why he keeps getting infections. He still thinks that he has some resistant bug, even though every single culture he has done has showed otherwise. So he cultured his ears again and we started the usual regimen of drops for 10 days. He said that if the culture comes back negative and he gets one more ear infection, he will recommend taking out his adenoids. Apparently the adenoids just sit back there and collect bacteria and he thinks that taking them out will stop the ear infections. He said that he sees kids that tubes don’t work for them and once he removes the adenoids the ear infections stop. He also said that he has seen a few that even that doesn’t work, and those kids usually have immune problems. Surprisingly I’m not really worried about that at this point because other than the ear crap, Bryce is healthy.

So now we wait. I should have the results from the culture back tomorrow, and I’m sure they will be negative just like all the other ones have been. Hopefully this infection will clear up and not come back, but we go back in a month regardless. I hate the thought of Bryce having to have surgery again, but I have heard that once kids get their adenoids out, they never get sick again. That would be wonderful!