ent

Last December, Hudson had an ear infection that for the life of us would not fully clear up.  After a few rounds of amoxicillin and 3 rocephin shots, his fluid still hadn't gone away and our doctor wanted us to see an ENT to possibly get tubes put in.  

I scheduled an appointment, brought him in to the first ENT and after failing a hearing test (I already knew his hearing wasn't normal) and one QUICK look into his ears, the doctor said he needed tubes, adenoids removed and tonsils out.  I can't say in the moment I was completely educated about all this but I will say I didn't feel GREAT about the news or comfortable with it.  I went home, talked to Kent about it and we decided to go ahead with the surgery.  After all, this is a fairly common surgery.  Well, the day before the planned surgery, Hudson came down with strep.  This meant the surgery couldn't be performed and we had to cancel the surgery (this was the first red flag).  

Since I didn't LOVE the first doctor and since I didn't feel 100% comfortable anyway, I decided to take his strep as a sign and scheduled a second opinion instead of just rescheduling the surgery.  This time, the doctor did a MUCH more thorough look into his ears and said that he didn't need his tonsils out but would recommend tubes and adenoids.  I decided to schedule the surgery a second time not really paying attention to my gut to NOT go through with it.  The night before the surgery this time, Hudson woke me up in the middle of the night and started puking.  Again, the surgery had to be cancelled because he was sick (a sickness that literally lasted those few hours--he was back to himself with no other symptoms by mid morning).  

After all this and a little bit of research, we decided to put a halt on the surgery and wait 6 months when we moved to Dallas to see if the fluid cleared up on it's own.  What I learned after some research was that often times, doctors RUSH to surgery when in fact, if  you give the fluid a little bit of time, it will fully clear up on it's own with little to no damage to their hearing.  I was a little hesitant to hold off but we just didn't feel right about surgery.  Fast forward 6 months and took him to a NEW ENT in Dallas.  He passed his hearing test (which almost brought me to tears) and then the doctor looked in his ears and saw very little fluid in his left ear with nothing left in his right ear.  This doctor agreed with my research and said that they are trying to educate doctors now to not rush straight to surgery because of this.  He also said that in all his research, he's also found that saline spray and Nasonex can help clear up the fluid as well.  With that, we decided to try saline and Nasonex for 6 weeks to see if that cleared up the rest of the little fluid left.  

In a few weeks, we will go in for a quick check and then will be on our way surgery FREE!

I'm so glad we finally listened to that little voice telling us not to go through with the surgery.  I'm also so grateful that we found a doctor here in Dallas that didn't feel the need to RUSH to surgery right away and didn't think that I was CRAZY!