Today, the doc said she had a lot of wax in her ear, making it hard to see, so he used a weird suction device to try to get it out. Kaylee was crying and very squirmy during that, so he didn't get it all out. He said she doesn't have any fluid in her ears, which is good, and had the audiologist do the tympanometry test again. Her left ear was still showing signs of "stiffness" (recap: basically, when eardrum doesn't flex as much as it should when hit with soundwaves).
The doc looked in her ear again after that test, but said there was still so much wax, that might be interfering with the test. Unfortunately for Kaylee, this meant they had to "papoose" her - strap her down on a table with wrist cuffs and a big body cuff. Add to the restraints the fact that the suction device probably sounded to her like a very loud train...needless to say, she did not like that at all and screamed/cried the whole time she was strapped down. Don't worry, she calmed quickly and was smiling again within about 2 minutes after we picked her up. During that suction procedure, the doc pulled out a HUGE chunk of wax that just stuck to the end of the suction tube - it had to be wiped off so he could continue. So he was able to get quite a bit out that time. Just took the full body restraint system.
(First pic here is just a cute one from a couple days ago - she gets so happy when she stands up on her own! Others are from today...obviously...)
The audiologist redid the tympanometry test, and Kaylee's ear did much better. The results indicated that the wax was indeed interfering with that test, and the doc concluded that based on the results of that and the OAE test done last month, her hearing loss is likely an inner ear issue. Good news is, if it's an inner ear thing, she won't need tubes. Bad news, she might need a hearing aid. He referred us to a Pediatric Audiologist, and we'll try to get an appointment with her in January. She'll be able to do more in depth testing and figure out what our next steps should be, whether it's wait and see, go ahead with a hearing aid or something in between. They keep saying she'll develop normally, and so far that seems to have been the case. So honestly we're not sure if a hearing aid is really necessary at this point, but we'll see what the professionals have to say...
If you're interested in a bit more info on the hearing screen process for children, a good, easily understandable site I've found is at http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/eyes/hear.html. (FYI, the site has detailed info on what is involved with Tympanometry, OAE and other tests.)
4 comments:
Poor Kaylee to have to be strapped down like that. They did something similar to Ethan when he had his stitches and it was so hard to watch him scream bloody murder. We'll keep praying for her.
poor thing. i see your hand on her and am wondering if you cried. don't know how i would deal with that and am glad you guys are through with that appointment.
Of course we hated it that she cried, but she was just scared, nothing was hurting her. I guess we've toughened up watching her bang herself around at home and cry (all the crawling, pulling up, getting into things), so we were both okay. The doc said to stand there and try to calm her, but I don't think it would have mattered - the nurse was holding her head still and she was screaming so much (her face was bright red by the end!) that she couldn't even see me. Plus that suction thing was pretty loud, and with it being right in her ear, I can only imagine how it sounded to her. From the time they strapped her in until he was done was probably only 2 minutes, and like I said she was over it and happy again within about a minute or two after that, so the experience obviously didn't create too much of a lasting impression! She didn't even squirm when they redid the tympanometry test (sticking something else in that ear). She's pretty tough. :-D
I found your blog through google- if she does need a hearing aid, it will help her out a lot! My little guy has a moderate loss and you can't really tell he has a loss because he seems to respond. But, he's missing some consonant sounds now that he's getting older (like "pop" would come out as "ah"). With his hearing aids, he gets all the speech sounds and he's starting to make some real progress. Good luck with future hearing tests!!
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