A Plan

Although the surgery went well yesterday, I left feeling frustrated with the conversation with the doctor afterwards. Mike and I have made some plans that hopefully will move us in the right direction:

1. We talked to James's audiologist about options for providing some kind of amplification during this post-surgery period of time when he can't wear his hearing aids, and perhaps for future times if he needs to take a break from them (if he continues to have skin problems). She suggested getting something like the Pocketalker, which seems kind of like the FM system except it goes into headphones rather than a hearing aid. The important thing with that (assuming James will wear the headphones!) is to make sure it's not too loud -- we don't want it to damage his hearing that way. 

2.  We got a recommendation from our pediatrician's office for a different ENT, so at least we have the potential for a second opinion or possibly switching the majority of James's ear care entirely. His current doc may be "the best" on some dimensions, but I think maybe he's just too busy right now to be giving the best care to James.

(You can skip this part, it's just me complaining.) For instance, yesterday he noted irritation on James's outer ear, which he said would not have been caused by an infection, so perhaps we need a consult with a dermatologist.  Well, that's fine, but I'm pretty sure that irritation is not a new development; it would have been better if he'd noticed it during one of the previous three visits.  And when I asked him about what we could do post-surgery to prevent granulation tissue on the eardrum, he said something about how that was just normal for the body to develop it and push out the tubes.  Okay, but I'm pretty sure it's NOT normal for the scar tissue to occlude the tubes and create continuing discharge and require another surgery to fix (which is what happened last time), right?  It's possible that I'm misunderstanding something here, but I'm guessing he didn't review James's chart before the procedure.  So I left a message today reminding him about all of that in case it changes the treatment plan for this time. 

3.  We are going to try to learn some basic signing as a family to have another way of communicating with James for times like this when for whatever reason his hearing is not optimal.  (I suspect James is going to pick up lipreading on his own.) A couple weeks ago I got the boys a regular Signing Time video (same people as Baby Signing Time, but made for slightly older kids), and they love it just as much as Baby Signing Time.  (Mattie in particular is obsessed with the theme song and asks me to rewind it over and over.)  James loves signing and he likes signing with me, so that seems to be a good start.  More signing time videos are on their way!  :)