Tympanoplasty

 Poor Preston has been blessed with allergies. This means he's had a fair share of ear infections, which has lead to two sets of tubes and his adenoids being removed. Unfortunately as a result of the repeat tubes he has holes in his eardrums. Normally tubes fall out and the hole heals itself. In Prestons case the holes got bigger and bigger causing his hearing to be effected. So we had two choices, surgery to fix the holes or medicated drops for life and a hearing aid in the right ear where the hole was "significantly large".
We opted for the surgery.
So a few days after we got back from our Utah trip we went in for his Tympanoplasty. With the tympanoplasty they make a C shaped incision behind his ear, pull it back, collect some fibrous tissue and then surgically attach it to his eardrum. Then they reattach his ear. Luckily he only had to have this done with his right ear, the left ear's hole was small enough it could be fixed with a paper patch, which means no cutting. 

The surgeon came in and marked which ear was the one they would be working on, which Preston though was hilarious. I didn't since that permanent marker took a few days to get off. 

The whole procedure took about an hour and fifteen minutes and then he was in recovery for another hour. He has a history of having nausea/vomiting as a result of anestheisa and this time was no different. We were getting ready to leave and I picked him up and he threw up on me. Then a few more times after that. They gave him something for nausea and we left and he threw up a few more times in the car on the way home.
He was pretty out of it and HATED his bandage on, but it had to stay on for 24 hours. 

Once that came off he was much more comfortable. He had surgical tape all around the back of his ear which we had to leave on for 3 days and which the kids at school called "gross". Stinking kids. 

Then we very carefully removed the tape a few days later and got to see how it looked. So clean! Not as bad as I was expecting. 

They said it would take about 6 weeks before his hearing was back to normal, which I believe. But he knows he can't hear as good out of that ear and will turn his head to his other ear for us to talk into. We started doing antibiotic ear drops yesterday and will keep doing those for 3 weeks till his followup appointment on the 14th. He had an appointment with his primary doctor a few days ago and I had him check out the patches and he said they looked good, so I'm hopeful. Plus his hair is growing back nicely. 

Because of his allergies and the fact they are getting worse (at night he coughs so hard he throws up and will gasp for air) I took him in to his regular doctor to have some allergy testing done. If we can find something he's allergic to that is making them worse I'd like to know. They also did an asthma test to see if he has allergy induced asthma. But that test was inconclusive. So in a week we should have the allergy test blood work back and in the mean time we have a new nose spray and allergy medication to take. 

His hair is amazing. 

And finally, he had a Gingerbread Man meets Mother Goose program at school before Christmas break and he was Humpty Dumpty who fell off the wall and did great! He loves school and is doing so well. His reading is amazing, and he's learning so many good things. We have parent teacher conferences the first week in January which I can't wait for. My favorite thing is for people to talk to me about how great my kids are!