Olivia Grace Has Surgery

After 6 months of wondering what Olivia's hearing future held.... she had surgery. On their second day or so of life, babies are given the newborn hearing screen test in the hospital. I am sure most babies pass, as Drew did... so when they took Olivia down for hers we did not think twice about it. However, she came back the first day with some random excuse, and we were told they would do it again the next day... well the next day came and she came back with a slip that read left ear pass, right ear refer, or something like that, meaning FAIL. Everyone said it was probably nothing, it happens from time to time, and we would need to have her re-tested in a few weeks. We took her to St. Joes for the resreen, the lady actually preformed the test twice, and again the results showed fail in the right ear. We were then referred out to University of Michigan for some special testing. Again same results, by this time we were starting to get a little worried about the future of Olivia's hearing. However, we always said we would deal with it, and if this is the worst thing, we would take it. We had to go back in 6 weeks, then 6 more weeks, and then 6 more weeks after that, it was one wait after the next, and somewhere in the middle, Miss O contracted the swine flu, then got a secondary sinus infection and after that also failed her left ear. After 4 visits with the audiologist we saw the E.N.T, Dr. G - they again rescreened her with a different kind of test this time, no wires attached, just her responding to noises while sitting on my lap... and she responded normally for her age. The tympanogram showed her left ear was still very stiff though. Based on her history, test results over the previous 6 months the doctor felt that Olivia needed ear tubes. He said something like, "We can wait until she can't hear anymore, and starts falling behind or we can do it now"... so we did it NOW!

Even though Drew had tubes with adenoids out the year before, we were a little nervous, as he was 3 and she only 6 months. Kevin took the day off work, and down to AA we went. She was such a big girl! she enjoyed playing before hand, went well with the nurse, however her coming out of anesthetic was a little rough combined with her gassy tummy - she was crying a lot, as a volunteer played the guitar and sang behind us to calm her. She had ear drops for 7 days, and was a little trooper, her recovery was GREAT! and so far we think its helping, she turns and looks at a whisper now...woohoo! So happy to say that, as there were days throughout this journey where she would not respond to me at my loudest tone.