Assorted News and Crap

The Boyness Scoop:
So a while back we noticed Boyness wasn't hearing so well again, and it was consistent over a couple of weeks even without dairy exposure. I took a look in his ear and saw some fairly alarming things, so we did a week of diphenhydramine (an over the counter med, which worked the one other time we'd tried it). But after that week, when I took a look in his ear the negative pressure had persisted and I was alarmed to see something that I thought could be a cholesteatoma. A couple days later, his ped came up with the same thoughts (without me telling him first...sigh), so he sent us off with some nasonex and a promise to get our referral in to an otolaryngologist. That referral took a little over a week, but it took us an additional two weeks to get in...which brings us to Monday.

So, we went to see Dr. Jennifer Heydt in Bellevue. Their office is awesome, the staff is awesome, and they did a great job making sure we knew what was going on and why. A couple hours of tests, look-sees, and conversations later, we had decided to schedule surgery to place ear tubes (she said that what I and the ped had seen was not an abnormal growth but rather a portion of the middle ear not normally visible - the persistant negative pressure had drawn the membrane back that far), and to do an xray to help determine whether he needs his adenoids removed (she suspects adenoid hypertrophy has been blocking his eustacean tubes).

Boyness did a great job sitting in a little soundproof booth for a lengthy amount of time, raising his hand for beeps and repeating back words and all that stuff. He apparently has no nerve damage but his hearing is significantly impaired; presumably relieving the pressure on the tympanic membrane will resolve this entirely.

We left her office and arrived at the radiology consultants approximately 10 minutes after the xray tech had left for the day. Go figure. So we returned yesterday and I'm waiting now for Dr. Heydt to get the xrays and interpret them for us.

His surgery is scheduled for Oct. 24th. Now the only question is whether it will be the ears and the adenoids, or just the ears.

Other Scoopness:

I compiled the kids' school supply list - yes, only just now, but honestly who cares, they are learning - and it is awesome. If this actually works out the way it is supposed to, I should get their stuff in a couple of weeks. There are tons of cool things on their lists!

Snap Circuits
Young Scientist Kits
Logic Links

Microscopes and water testing kits!
Sentence and punctuation learning tools! Writing prompts!
Art supplies!

What fun! I hope.

I also signed them up for swimming lessons and sent in the reimbursement forms. Hoping I did everything right and will get my reimbursements promptly as well.