Jake's Update

We took Jake to his one year well-baby check up just after his birthday. The doctor was concerned about some fluid behind his ears. He said it was kind of "gluey" and thick, but they didn't look infected. He said that it could be a reason why Jake wasn't sleeping through the night. As we talked about it, he looked back in the chart and saw that Jake had some fluid behind his ears when we were there in December. I don't really remember that, but we were there because he had bronchitis and had to do breathing treatments, so I probably wasn't much concerned about the fluid at that time, and neither was the doctor. But based on how thick the fluid was now, the doctor was concerned that it had been there since December, rather than being a new case. So he referred us to a pediatric ENT, just to be safe.

We went to the ENT last week, and as he looked in Jake's ears, he frowned. I asked if it was bad, and he said it was "interesting." That's not good when a 'specialist' tells you your kid's symptoms are interesting. He still had the fluid, and his right ear drum was retracted against the tube behind it because of the pressure. The fluid in his left ear may be a bit infected. The ENT said that it could be caused by an infection (either the one in that left ear, which he doubted, or one in the back of his nose). Or it could just be caused by that fluid not draining, which causes the pressure. He was way more concerned about the retracted ear drum than just the fluid in the other ear. He said that he couldn't tell if the ear drum was stuck to that tube behind it or not. If it is, he'll lose hearing in that ear, but that's the extreme scenario, and since we caught it pretty early, its likely not stuck. He did say that Jake is probably experiencing some hearing loss, but only about 30%, and that will be restored as soon as we get the ear drum fixed.

I was nervous about Jake having to get tubes. I know that they are not a big deal, and lots of kids have them, but I don't want MY kid to have them. I was worried that the ENT would automatically want to put them in. I talked to him about that, and he told me he has a pretty conservative philosophy about ear tubes, and doesn't just put them in every kid. He said that he wanted to try to treat Jake first, to see if it is just an infection causing the problems. So Jake's on a 21 day antibiotic regimine. We go back in a month, and if the infection is gone, great. If not, we'll start talking about tubes, but even then, probably only on the one side. He talked to me a good bit about the process of putting in the tubes, and definitely made me feel a lot better about it. Here's hoping we don't need to do them!