A Visit to Children's Today

We visited the cleft team for Tyson's 3 month post palate and ear tubes surgery. I was very pleased with the outcome, which might sound funny when I say that he has to get ear tubes again. Here's the gist:

Audiology: Ty wouldn't cooperate during the hearing test. But when they put the sensor in his ear to test for ear drum activity, it flat lined, meaning basically something is still blocking the ear drum.

Pediatrician: Very happy with growth and progress

Surgeon: Palate is healed! Praise the Lord! No new surgeries until we are ready for a lip revision. We are thinking maybe December 2011? Yeah, that far off! Yay!

ENT: Looked at his ears. There is dried blood blocking the tubes, so they are not working. The ENT said it's the first time in years he has seen this and he insists we redo the tubes, as drops aren't going to help. It's that bad. Ty is also very loud, and the ENT said, "Is he always this loud?" We said YES! He agrees, we have to fix this. PRAISE THE LORD! I was in a personal silent peril because I couldn't believe he had tubes and could still be as loud as he is.

Speech: This is a long story, so if you're not into speech, the gist is he is making the sounds well but needs speech to get rid of old bad habits. The long story is that Ty can make the sounds! But, he makes compensatory sounds called glottal stops in his vocal cords, so he's not using consonants to make syllable stops. For example, for "Rocky" he says, "Ah-ee" even though he can now make the "k" sound. If he were a regular developing two-year old, we wouldn't even be talking about speech. But, we have to work on eliminating the glottal stops. Also, due to his hearing loss, he is straining his vocal cords. Therefore, once the new tubes are in, we will be doing some behavior modification regarding his voice level. This will be well worth it!

So that was our day! It's always a long one, but I always come home feeling so blessed and happy we chose to adopt Tyson. He is one amazing little boy!