*Ear Surgeries

     This blog post has been a long time coming and I can finally write it.  In April 2011, Mackenzie and Nathan both had surgery to get tubes put in their ears, and Mackenzie also had her adenoids removed.  I didn't think to bring my camera with me so I used my phone to get some precious pictures of them before they went in for the surgery.  The problem was that I couldn't figure out how to get the pictures off of my phone.  Yesterday Daren and I activated a new phone service and I needed a new phone that would work with the new plan.  It came with a USB cord for the phone so I thought, Hmmm, I'll just check and see if it works with my old phone.  It did!  So I could finally download all those phone pictures onto the computer.  There will soon be another blog post with all of those.
     Let me start by backing up.  Mackenzie was in kindergarten and as a normal part of kindergarten, the school nurse did hearing tests on all the kids.  They do other tests too but that was when we first found out that Mackenzie wasn't hearing 100%.  They did want to redo the test before referring her to an audiologist because even a cold can give you temporary hearing problems.  They repeated the test and she failed again.  They gave us the referral and we took Mackenzie to see an audiologist.  The audiologist discovered that she had a vacuum behind both of her eardrums pulling the eardrums tight towards her head.  She also confirmed that she wasn't hearing clearly.  She said it probably sounded to her like it would sound under water.  She also most likely felt some pain at times as well.
     The next step was to take her to an Ear, Nose, Throat doctor (ENT).  Mike's little boy, Jake, had to go see a pediatric ENT to get tubes in his ears and Mike and Cindy told us what a wonderful doctor he is.  So we decided to go to Valencia so that we could be sure to see a pediatric ENT.  At the same time we were figuring out all of Mackenzie's hearing problems, Nate was having ear infection after ear infection, so our pediatrician suggested that we go ahead and take him to the ENT too.  We made a double appointment with Dr. Vadapalli in Valencia.  It turned out that he had an office in Lancaster too so from then on we would be able to start seeing him there.  We also scheduled the surgeries to have the tubes put in their ears for a surgery center in Lancaster.
     We had to do a little bit more with Mackenzie because of her age.  Nate's problems were pretty common but Mackenzie's were unusual.  We took her to get an x-ray to see her adenoids because Dr. Vadapalli said if they were oversized then they could be blocking her ear tubes and causing the vacuum.  Because the x-ray wasn't 100% conclusive if the blockage was caused by the adenoids or not even though they were larger than normal, we decided to go ahead an have tubes placed in her ears as well as her adenoids removed at the same time.
     Mackenzie was very nervous about having surgery.  We tried to do some special things for her to make it easier on her.  We took her to the store and bought her some special pajamas to wear to the surgery center.  My mom got her a brand new stuffed unicorn.  She and Nathan couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight the night before.  The surgery was on April 28, 2011.  Nate was 10 months old and he was so grumpy because he was so hungry.  We changed them both into hospital gowns and they got hair nets for their head.  Mackenzie started to get really nervous and I could see that she was about to tear up.  Some sweet nurses brought her some coloring pages and some markers.  That helped her get her mind off of things and she cheered up quite a bit after that.
     Nate went first and he was done so fast!  But he was very, very sad for about 30 minutes.  Once he finally calmed down he was even smiling and being adorable to the nurses.  Dr. Vadapalli said Mackenzie would only take an extra 15 minutes because of the adenoids.  When it ended up being so much longer than that, Daren and I really started to get nervous.  The nurses assured us that the doctors always think it's going to go faster than it is because they forget to figure in all the prep time.  Because we had already gone back with Nathan, we were back there when they brought Mackenzie in.  I think normally they don't bring the parents back until the child is fully out of anesthesia because that was pretty hard to watch.  I couldn't even look and Daren couldn't stop looking.  She finally woke up but like Nate, she was very sad for a long time.  She said she was in pain so they gave her some pain medication and let her go back to sleep.  Nathan fell asleep too so we just sat in there for a long time while Mackenzie slept off the anesthesia and pain med.  We were so tired too because we had to get up so early in the morning to get to the surgery center by 7am.  Daren fell asleep next to Mackenzie while we were waiting for her to wake up.  Finally the nurses came in and woke her up and said it was time to get going.
     It was hard to see our little babies go through this trial and have to be put under general anesthesia.  But I am so grateful for modern medicine and that they were able to be helped.  After the kids had completely recovered, we went back to Dr. Vadapalli so that Mackenzie and Nathan could get their hearing tested.  We went to his office in Valencia because that's where he had the sound proof room for hearing tests.  It was so great to find out that both of them were hearing perfectly again!  And it was fun to stop by and visit Mike and Cindy and Jacob when we were there.