Yesterday was dedicated to Braden and the four important doctors' appointments he had. We started at the hearing lab for another round of tests. They were a little alarmed 6 weeks ago with the discrepancy in his lower decibels and wanted to repeat the tests. The audiologist repeated them twice again...both times were worse than before. But, overall, he's still only picking up only 44-50% of the conversational traffic in his left ear. He's holding "steady" with the original ratios from three years ago.
We went on to see the ENT. After carefully charting Braden's medical history and taking notes about his upcoming surgery...the doctor concluded what we were already knew. Braden needs a hearing aid. The school has placed him on the front row, on the left side, and he still needs some kind of hearing props to catch the full story of what's going on. Put's a whole new slant on "paying for your education". It's no longer optional, which means that we made the appointment to have him fitted with his new device on the first day of school...about the time his glasses come in. Watch out school: I don't know what he'll do when he realizes everything he's been missing out on!
Dr Mark Bassett, the ENT that saw Braden, thought that his shirt was pretty cool. I didn't even realize what he was wearing until he was sitting in the chair with the doctor looking down his throat. The innuendo is priceless!! It turns out that Dr Bassett graduated from BYU the year after I was born. He's been a doctor for a very long time. He's also a Colonel in the Air Force with special recognition for his service in the Air National Guard right after 9/11.
He took chart notes on the other kids and their medical histories to see if there was a pattern to follow. He shook his head and said he couldn't believe the number of issues that we've been challenged with in our brood. I just shake my head as well. Dr Tomkins comment about our odds being 1 in 1,000,000 are still echoing in my head. Hearing loss and glasses are gravy compared to some of the other challenges that Braden is going up against.
The doctor said that he puts people in hearing aids with hearing loss of 30% or more. Braden's need is doubled the minimum requirement at around 60%. He has definitely reached the stage where it's apparent that he's not hearing everything that he needs to. Our next challenge: to wrangle with the insurance. We've already been told that hearing aids aren't covered. Maybe there's a loophole. I never really understood how "hearing" can be seen as optional or as a vanity--especially at 9 years old. With his hip failing him, needing glasses already, orthodontics in the near future...the kid deserves a break somewhere ;) Maybe some Chinese wisdom will bring clarity to the situation.
We had an hour before we needed to head over to his MRI and orthogram. I let him pick anywhere he wanted to go for lunch. Taco Bell or Panda. He turned it back to me to decide between his choices. We went for Panda! I figured he deserved it before the trauma was about to start.
I had an idea what they were going to do to him because I'd seen something similar done almost four years ago with Nathan. Instead of an aspiration of fluid from the joint, the doctor would be injecting dye into the joint under x-ray, so that the soft tissue would be easier to detect during the MRI. But in order to get the dye down into the hip, they had to bring the movable x-ray machine over his hip and then use the image to guide the needle down into his joint. The Valium only took the edge off of his alarm. He giggled most of the time, in between some loud "Ow"s and "That hurts!" Band-aids on or near your privates is almost always never a good thing! Nathan didn't commiserate very well with him either because his surgery last week left him purple and blue in the same areas. But lesson learned. When the nurse says it's going to sting just like a little bee sting...they're lying to you and probably have never had anything done to them like it! Beware: It's going to sting, burn, ache, bruise, and be tender for days.
The MRI lasted almost the full hour afterwards. He did great. I kept joking with him about the medication because he said that he couldn't even tell that he had had anything. He was in great form and was anxious to get back for his turn on the X-BOX. In all honesty, you couldn't tell if he was off in his game...but his swagger was a little cocked to the right. He's on for surgery in another six weeks. He's very upbeat about it too. I think he's been taking notes from Nathan about all the perks of being a patient at Shriner's'! He asked the nurse for an I-pad to play with yesterday. They just laughed and said they wished they had one for themselves, let alone, him. Then he informed them that they did over at the Shrine. Too funny!
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