"To hear or not to hear..."

That is the question that we have hopefully answered today. Today was Luke's big day...ear tube day. Anyone that has had a conversation with either Kurt or I this winter will know that Luke has encountered the same fate that his big brother did in the ear infection department. We finally met the ear infection "quota" last Monday and received our referral to the ENT. We went to the same office, but a different doctor this time. Mainly because we could get things rolling a little faster and boy did we ever. We were able to get in for a consult last Wednesday and then boom - surgery this afternoon! We were actually very grateful that the doc was able to squeeze us in today. He said Luke's ears were in pretty bad shape and really needed the procedure. He flunked his hearing test last week too, but due to the amount of fluid in his ears. We will go back in a month to get it checked again. I'm certain it will be fine and just glad we are getting this done before it starts to infringe on his speech development.

Anyone that knows us well, will also know we've been through this twice before with Blake. So, it made the process somewhat easier. At least this time we were more confident in what we were doing and understood the benefits and risks. However, it didn't make the process easier in the "heart" department. It absolutely broke my heart to see my little baby boy being carried off by the anesthesiologist in his little koala scrubs.

He had a rough afternoon. His surgery was supposed to be a 2:45 so the last time he could eat was at 8:45 am. That didn't go over too well. He was doing fine until they gave him some grape flavored Tylenol around 2:00 and then the taste of "anything" put him over the edge. He then proceeded to cry, no scream, for at least an hour. It was terrible not being able to give him the one thing he wanted and that we knew would calm him instantly. Eventually, after many laps around the pre-op area, he crashed. And finally, about an hour later than we thought, he went into surgery. Children's has a nice waiting area that shows you on a video monitor the progress of your child's surgery so we knew the minute it started and the minute it was over. Phew!

So, it's done...for now. I can only hope at this point that the tubes stay in tact and we can make it through the rest of this winter and hopefully next.