Hearing Screening and Ear Tubes

Yesterday, November 16, Layne and I had the joy of driving to Taylorsville in South Salt Lake to have a hearing screening done and a few other auditory tests. Jared, mega dad that he is, came home at 10:00 to watch the other three so that we could go. He ended up getting a call from a friend in the ward who asked if I could take two of the other preschoolers to school for her, so Jared volunteered for the job. I was impressed.

Layne didn't pass her hearing screening, making this the fifth or sixth time, and the audiologist, upon closer examination, found that there were pockets of fluid on either side of Layne's eardrums. She called over to Primary Children's Med. Center (we know that place all too well these days) and arranged for us to have an appointment with an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor). I quickly called over to Layne's opthamalogist to cancel the appointment we had there so that I could make it to the other one.

Upon examination, the ENT doctors have decided to do an ear tube placement along with an ABR, a test to measure Layne's brain wave function in relation to her abilities to hear. When the ENT found out that she also needed an echocardiogram with sedation, he suggested that we do both surgeries at the same time so that she's only under the sedation once.

Agreed.

I spent the equivalent of three hours on the phone today trying to get a coordination of a cardiologist, echo tech team, and the ENT doctors to make this all happen. I will not expound further here for my own sanity.

SOOOOOO....... Layne's next surgeries will be on December 20. We are hoping that the echo will show that her heart is working well with no defects and that the ear tube placement/fluid drainage/brain wave testing will help improve her hearing abilities and help to pinpoint what type of hearing disabilities she faces so that we can all better help her. The doctors seemed hopeful that the fluid removal will help, in part.

We left PCMC around 5:00 p.m. and made our way back home. Layne had decided to vomit all of her lunch just as we were headed out the door yesterday (that was a fun cleanup) and decided to puke up all of her late afternoon bottle on the freeway around Orem. Needless to say, she had a rough day again and the car isn't smelling so hot these days.

Then she barfed up all over in her crib last night.

Add on an occupational therapy appointment this morning between calls to Primary Childrens', four not-so-happy kid campers, preschool, and another day of nonstop screaming from the Laynester, and you get a picture of how today went.

Not complaining. Just stating.

Now don't you feel good about your day?

Still cracks me up that she can be bawling her eyes out, but the second I bring out the camera, Layne flashes those pearly whites (no view of the new molars though).

At the end of the day, we couldn't love them all more.

Notice I said "at the end of the day."

It's been a long one.