Preface:
When decidingn to have children, all I could really think about was how much joy they would bring to our lives. It's funny how we imagine what our kids will look like, their personalities and what we will teach them to do. Never once do we think about the difficult times that we as parents will have to go through, and obviously, not every parent's journey is the same. Keith and I recently experienced one of those tough times and I'm glad to say that we made it through, but that feeling that you have when something is happening to your child and there isn't much you can do about it is something I don't wish on anybody. Here's the story...
We were recently at the pediatrician's office...again...to have Noah's ears rechecked after yet another round of antibiotics for ear infections. He's had several, but I wouldn't necessarily say they were excessive. However, there were times when Makenna would be at the office and our doctor would check Noah's ears, just because we were there. Sure enough, there was more than one occasion in which Noah had an ear infection and we didn't even know it. Over the last year or so, we've also noticed that Noah's speech is just not quite up to par for a three year old. Becuase he's with me all day, every day, I could understand a good bit of what he was saying, but everybody else around him couldn't. Our pediatrician suggested we have his speech and hearing evaluated and recommended an organization that would do that for us. I called and the waiting list was approximately six months. So, we wait. In the meantime, the doctor decided to refer Noah to an ENT, just to make sure there wasn't something else going on. I took him to see the ENT and sure enough, he spoke the words I was dreading to hear...Noah needed tubes in his ears and his tonsils and adenoids removed. After evaluating Noah, the ENT felt as though this was a major contributor to his speech issues. So we schedule surgery.
We were scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 6:00 a.m. on Monday, February 9. They told us to just bring Noah in his pajamas and to bring whatever toys he would like. We were all set and comfortable in the pre-op room. When it came time for the nurses to come and get Noah, the crying began...for both him and me. He looked at me with this "mommy, who are these people and where are they taking me" kind of look. At that point, I was a mess.
Surgery lasted only about 30-40 minutes. The nurse came to get us and take us back to the recovery room. As soon as I turned the corner, I could hear him. The noise that was coming out of my son was nothing like I had ever heard out of him before. The poor little thing...you could hear the raspiness in his voice and the more he cried, the more his throat hurt. You could just tell. He had an IV in his hand and a heart monitor on his foot and he was just miserable. The pain that I felt seeing my precious little boy in that much pain and misery was completely unbearable. The nurses were having to take care of me just as much as Noah. We were finally able to get some pain medication in him, after having to wrestle with him (he's a strong little thing) and he finally calmed down. We got settled in the post-op room and for the next three hours, he was in and out of sleep and I don't know how many times we watched Horton Hears A Who.
We are now two and a half weeks post-op. We made it through. It's amazing how resilient kids are. The next morning he woke up with a sore throat, but after a dose of meds, he was good to go the rest of the day. Needless to say, I think the whole thing was much harder on me that it was on him. Our ENT said that he had so much fluid built up in his ears and he just couldn't hear very well at all. Sure enough, his speech is picking up and we're able to understand more and more every day.
