Ear tube surgery & L&B

better, worse, indifferent? can anyone tell anything from this?

Surgery went well. Reuben is wheeled off to outpatient surgery kicking his legs with excitement, couldn't wait for it to begin. He returns an hour later with blood coming out of his ears, sorrowful pink eyes and such a sad look that it instantly brings me back to the PICU days, with a face so often worn then when he was high on sedatives. It makes me well up to see him like that.

We're both extremely tired after an early start and another BARD feeding tube leak, a soaked bed. Jason has managed to navigate a number of Drs to ensure that the dreaded BARD is taken out during this surgery to spare him the pain. So the Mick-key is back in and with that those previous problems of deflation but at least his bed won't get soaked every night. Breaking and deflating every week, emergency changes on Venice Pier I guess we'll just have to deal with. We'd ordered another button, an Entristar but it fails to arrive in time for surgical insertion.

Dr K gives a debrief on the L&B, a laryngeal and bronchial scope to check the progress of healing from his prolonged intubation and which of course Dr K has always been resistant to undertake before October. Perhaps this is why we are shot down in flames by Dr K. We manage to get a photo of his throat from the notes, but Dr K is pretty brusque, preempting our questions, "how long will it take for the "large cuneiform cartilage bilaterally" to heal?", saying, "and no I won't give you a timeframe for it to heal". Jason probes "so is the news good, bad or indifferent?", the reply "indifferent". Indifference indeed. We're too disempowered with tiredness to challenge him. This cartilage it appears after later investigation when we're home is the same laryngeal malatia. Yet we have no idea of the reflux is being managed with Prevacid sufficiently to have reduced the angry look of his throat in previous scopes. We call Jiffy and she says we'll get a debrief on Wednesday thankfully.

Also noted is left otitis media, an ear infection, which we're now treating. Reuben often fails to let us know he's in discomfort over anything unless it really is pretty painful.

We arrive home and Christine has prepared everything for us, she's even made the beds! The irony is that it's Jason and I who go to sleep whilst Reuben sits watching Dumbo with Christine, refreshed after a nap in the car. I wonder if his hearing has improved now on the moderate (50db) loss side with the tubes or whether things sounds less foggy to him, like his ears have just popped after a flight. The decision was made not to insert a tube on his right profound ear. Dr K's only positive light was to say that when Reuben flies with us for a planned trip to the UK in May/June, he'll be the most comfortable person on the plane with his ear tube.