The Ear Drama

Why is there a medical-looking picture thingy on the blog today? 

Drama. That's why. It's always something around here.

That medical-looking picture thingy is the inside of my daughter's head, and I'll give you two seconds to guess which daughter it is.  I mean, really, who else in this family loves drama as much as Noodle?  She swims in drama.  She does the backstroke in drama.  Middle name?  Bah! Drama is her FIRST name. 

So, it all started a few years ago.  No, scratch that.  It started somewhere in Noodle's baby years.  She had ear trouble.  A few ear infections.  Fluid behind her ear drums all the time.  Her doctor at the time brushed it off, saying it wasn't so bad, not to worry,  and there's nothing we can do about the fluid issue.  Poor Noodle. Those ears.  Trouble. She would be dizzy quite a lot.  She had pain often.  I tried to brush it off too, telling myself that she will grow out of it.

After many years, though, things did not get better.  She did not grow out of it.  Worse than that, we realized we were living with a nearly deaf child at that!  She was well spoken, given abundant attention, and homeschooled, and therefore her speech was impeccable, even precocious.  But, we had to shout things.  Repeat things.  Repeat things.  REPEAT THINGS!!

At about age seven, Noodle had begun seeing a new family physician who was actually concerned with what we knew to be a problem.  She was sent to an ENT. She failed miserably at the hearing test.  Tubes were inserted in her eardrums to let them drain.

Ahhhhh......relief.

Tubes worked!  Noodle could hear.  No more fluid.  Life was normal.  Time passed. Until....

We began noticing a gradual slide back down into the old Noodle.  The deaf Noodle.  The ear infection Noodle.  By the time she turned 10, things were getting ugly inside those ears and we returned to the ENT doctor for help.  This time, he recommended a second set of tubes and to remove her adenoids.  (Adenoids are lumps of immune system tissue sitting in behind your nose up in your throat.  They generally disappear by the teen years.)

The surgery almost went fine.

Her adenoids were giant and slimy--and I'm going on what I was told, since the ENT didn't take pictures or hand them to me in a sandwich baggie or anything.  The were definitely a problem and needed to come out.  He inserted a tube in her left ear with no problem.  The right ear, however was a problem.  Her ear canal was weird, short and narrow.  He made an incision in the ear drum and couldn't get to the other side or see through it.  He was baffled.  Noodle got only one tube that day.

Which brings me back to this:

It is a CT scan.

If you look closely, you can see the weirdness.

That is the old tube from when she was seven.  STILL IN HER EAR.  The eardrum grew over it and became the giant beast you see in the image, and pushed it back into her inner ear.

Comparatively, this is what her other (almost normal) ear drum looks like with the (new) tube in it:

What??  Totally different.  You don't have to be a doctor to see that.

Apparently, this is a rare complication of getting tubes in your ears.  Instead of the eardrum pushing the tube out as it grows and matures, it pushes it inward and grows increasingly angry at this little green plastic foreign object in it.  And it is so rare, that Noodle's ENT doctor had never even had this happen to any of his patients before. And, he sent us to Shands Hospital in Gainsville, FL to have the chief ENT there figure out what to do with my little drama child and her ear.  And he's saving her CT scans to show off at his next ear doctor conference.

Yesterday, we met the new doctor at Shands and found out what kind of surgery to expect.  (A big thanks to Elaine for coming with me and taking notes so I didn't come out of there with just a surgery date and a confused expression on my face.)

• It will be outpatient.
• The actual surgery will last about an hour, but the whole process will take all day.
• Noodle will be under full anesthesia.
• The doc will cut from behind her ear to get inside. 
• He will use a drill to widen her ear canal.
• He will use a laser to "vaporize" the extra tissue on the ear drum.
• He will remove the old tube and stitch up the hole.
• He will take skin from the back of her outer ear to use as a graft on the ear drum to help prevent it from scarring over again.
• He will not put another tube in it for now.
• Noodle will be out of commission for about a week.
• She will (hopefully) recover her hearing.

The surgery is scheduled for next month.  All your prayers for success will be happily accepted.  Noodle would also appreciate anyone volunteering to do her school work for her during that week of recovery, too.  That's her current most vocal worry--homework.  Boy, has she let me know about it too.

Drama.