Tubes, Growling, No more bed rails

Jackson and I took Jonathan to see his ENT today. We went six weeks ago. At that time, Jonathan had a tympanogram done that showed a graph of ear activity. His right ear revealed negative pressure. That means it could act as a vacuum and suck in fluid. There was no fluid at the time but we were supposed to come back for a check up. We came back today.

I got there at 8am. The receptionist looks at me questioningly and says, "What do you need?" I am thinking, "What the heck does she mean by that?" I say, "We are here for an appointment." Duh. Then she says, "Oh, we deleted today's schedule and were not sure who was coming in. The doctor had surgery this morning and won't be in for an hour. You can wait." Yeah, sure. I will wait in the waiting room all morning because I have nothing to do. I stay at home so time is not precious. We just watch TV and eat a lot of cheetos so hanging out here will be a change. Yeah, thanks. I do say, "No, we won't wait. This is inconvenient for me and I won't come another day. We have plans this morning. I will come back." So, I came home and stubbornly found things to do for 20 minutes before going back.

We went back at 9am, waited for a while, and then got called back. The nurse did a tympanogram on each of Jonathan's ears. The doctor explained that now there is fluid in the right ear, something he was hoping would not be there. He explained that in kids with DS, he would rather be aggressive than wait. He wants to do tubes. He talked about how kids with DS are going to have speech issues and how they need their ears to be working - I can agree with that. Jonathan's speech and language will suffer if he cannot hear properly. He cannot afford that.

So, I left the office with plans for Jonathan to have tubes put in his ears next Wednesday. Jackson had his adenoids removed and tubes put in over a year ago so Jonathan's news does not really scare me like it did when it was time for Jackson to "go under the knife." Now I am thankful it happened to prepare me for today. However, now that I think about it, even this would pale in comparison to the heart surgery. Everything does. No sweat.

The surgery will be performed at Children's hospital. The doctor says that kids with DS don't always react to the anesthesia in a positive way. He just likes to be extra careful.

On a different note, Jonathan is attempting to communicate quite a bit with growling. If he is working hard, he growls. If something happens he does not care for, he growls differently. He used to cough at me, I would imitate it, and he would do it back to me. It seemed to be our little joke. He is our little bear.

Jackson slept in his big boy bed last night without the assistance of the bed rail. Jamie coated the floor with pillows in the event of a fall. However, Jackson was fine and has reached another milestone!

Thank you for keeping up with us!

Love,
Julie

juliewarren@mindspring.com