What a way to celebrate your adoption, right?
Welcome to the team! Now let’s go drill into your head! Ready, break!
Kim and I took Josie to Danville for the first of many ear surgeries last Friday. She failed her hearing test at school, and the doc said that due to years of untreated infections, both her eardrums were perforated, the bones in her inner ear were deteriorated, and there was a mass of cells growing toward her brain. Not good. Not by a long shot. But the doc also said that with some reconstructive surgeries, Josie should be hearing well in the long run.
She put on a brave face, but Josie was scared. We did our best to explain what was going to happen, and I truly believe that she was trusting God to get her through the experience, but she was nervous. The nurses and doctors were great, and the day went well, even though it took longer than we expected.
The procedure sounds pretty gruesome– they make an incision behind her ear, fold the ear forward, and drill into her skull. When the doc got things to where she could get a good look, things were different than she anticipated. The ear bones were fine! The problem was that the growth was behind the bones, which meant that she had to cut the perfectly good bones out to remove the growth. Not to worry; the prosthetic replacements will do the trick. The doc believes that she got all the bad cells out, and she was able to replace the perforated eardrum with a new one formed from a layer of facia from Josie’s under Josie’s scalp. How cool is that?
All through the process, Josie has been a trooper. She never complains, even though she had a bruise-y kind of thing on her tailbone from all the time she spent unconscious on the operating table. She was extremely lethargic for the day after the surgery, but seems to be back to her normal self today. She has to protect her ear, especially the inner pressure of the eardrum, for the next 6 weeks. That means that she has to be careful if she sneezes! Any displacement of the eardrum and we’re back to another replacement. I’ve been changing the dressing on the ear, and almost all of the drainage and blood has stopped. She’s really doing well. She must be hearing her voice differently, because she’s talking much quieter these days! She says that she thinks the surgery changed her voice!
Here are some pics from the day. They aren’t glamour shots, but I think she looks great!
1 Comment
Josie’s beautiful ears | Stac's Place · July 31, 2013 at 12:39 am
[…] detailed posts about my daughter Josie’s ear surgeries. If you want to read them they are here, here, here, and here. But the cliff’s notes version is that Josie was practically deaf. […]