Hearing Aid and MIC-KEY Checkup

 

Today Ben had 3 medical follow up visits which made for a very long day.  All Ben’s specialists are located at the university hospital about an hour away from our home.  We left home around 10:30 am.  Jonny came with us.

The first visit was with the audiologist.  The bad news: according to Ben’s last ABR, he had some significant worsening in his hearing overall.  The good news: his hearing loss seems to have a significant conductive component to it which might be related to middle-ear fluid, or his very tiny ear canals.  This means that his hearing might very well improve as he gets older and bigger.  The audiologist did make his hearing aids a little stronger for now, but maybe this is going to be just a temporary adjustment.  The important thing is that he can hear us talking to him, and he does tolerate his hearing aids very well for now.

The second visit was with the otolarngologist (ENT specialist).  Again, she was unable to even see far enough into his tiny ear canals to see his eardrums.  She did clean out some earwax, which Ben didn’t appreciate very much!  She said we’ll have to adopt a wait-and-see approach since his structures are so tiny.  She wouldn’t even be able to put in ear tubes if they were needed at this point.

The third visit was to see the G-tube nurse again about the granulation tissue we’ve been fighting around Ben’s MIC-KEY site.  She reassured us that it didn’t look all that bad.  She gave me some tips on using the silver nitrate, and said we could also use some hydrocortisone or triamcinolone (steroid) cream to keep the tissue in check.  Ben seems to mind the cream less than the silver nitrate, so we’ll see how that works.  She did cauterize the tissue that was there with the silver nitrate to demonstrate her technique, and Ben didn’ t like that one bit!  He weighed in at a hefty 10 lbs 15.2 oz at this last visit.

Jonny was a good boy considering how long we were in a boring place.  He was very protective of Ben, and didn’t like when Ben had uncomfortable procedures done to him.

Isaac went to some friends’ house after school and had a great time.  We got home after 5 pm.  Thank heaven for leftovers in the fridge!