Jackson's Tube Surgery

Jackson has only had three ear infections, but they seem to just hang around. Jackson's 2nd ear infection lasted 4 weeks. It finally went away after a round of antibiotic shots. His 3rd ear infection lasted 6 weeks and he still had it when he had the surgery. The round of antibiotic shots didn't take care of it, so Dr. Gonzalez referred him to Dr. Jakob, an ENT.

He went to see Dr. Jakob on Wednesday. She checked his ears and said they were still awful. Then, he had his hearing test. It was a 2 part test. The first part consisted of putting something in his ear, which any baby with an ear infection is not going to like. The second part was much better. We sat in a small room with Jackson on my lap. They had 3 boxes in the room: one in front of us and one on each side. Above the box was a speaker. A sound would begin very quietly and get louder until Jackson heard it and turned towards it. Then, the box would light up and the character in it would start spinning. It was very child friendly. Unfortunately, the test showed his hearing in his left ear was really bad. I'm guessing it's from the fluid in his ears.

Dr. Jakob said he needed to get tubes right away and we scheduled the surgery for Friday.

We know pretty many people who have children with tubes and they say it's one of the best things they ever did. That made us feel a little better, though the whole thing was still stressful.

Jackson was scheduled to be the first surgery of the day since they schedule them from the youngest to oldest. After filling out all of the paperwork, we waited about 5 minutes to go back. We met all the nurses and the anesthesiologist. Jackson got his monitor so they could watch his heart rate and check his vitals. As you see below, Jackson was wearing Mommy's lucky number

Then, when Dr. Jakob arrived they took him back. Jackson wasn't bothered in the least by a complete stranger taking him away from us. We went out front and about 10 mins later, Dr. Jakob came out. She said Jackson did well, but that his ears were really bad and full of infected puss. Poor little guy. A few minutes later we were able to go in and see Jackson. He was crying a little bit, but as soon as he saw us he was okay. He was drowsy still, but after about 30 mins in recovery his heartrate was back to normal and we were able to take him home.

Since, he's been a little fussy on and off and his sleeping has been a little off. But, overall the whole thing was relatively easy.
He has a follow-up appointment on Thursday and hopefully everything will check out.