Holden got to see the ENT doctor today.  Despite being nearly finished yet another round of strong antibiotics, the doctor said that his ears are a mess.  They are filled with fluid still and one ear is hypervascularized, which I assume is a consequence of the inflammatory process.  They did a tympanogram and both ears were flat.  They did a hearing test as well—in kids his age they present auditory stimuli and watch to see whether they correctly orient to the stimuli or not.  Holden sat on my lap in the little sound-attenuated room for the hearing test, and I was a bit surprised at what he couldn’t hear.  I know my own hearing is not that good to begin with, so if I could hear the white noise bursts and Holden couldn’t, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’s not hearing a lot of things that he should be.  Despite this fact, the doctor was pleased that the hearing loss hasn’t markedly affected H’s language development.  We figured that H regularly uses about 80 different words, which is probably pretty good for a 19-month old.  I wonder what is going to happen to his language development when he is actually able to hear everyone around him.

We scheduled his surgery for February 5th.  It’s only a week and a half away—although H still has 3 more days of antibiotics, I am a little nervous that we are going to run into more issues with this infection before the surgery.  This all means he needs to go nearly a week between finishing his antibiotics and having the tubes placed.  I don’t know that he will last a week before spiking another fever and screaming all night.  And of course, H is not allowed any Motrin for 2 weeks prior to the surgery.  So if we do end up having more infection issues, there’s not going to be an especially good way to deal with it.

I am so relieved though, that we have the surgery scheduled and there is an end in sight.  Our smiley happy boy, who we miss so much, is only a week and a half away.