So it snowed last week. Isaac's school finished lunchtime on the Tuesday, and everyone was off on the Wednesday. When I say it snowed, we had about an inch tops. The authorities did their best to deal with the roads, we even saw lorries out salting when we went out for dinner on Tuesday night.
Isaac's school were also off on the Thursday, though Oliver was back in. It was cold, -13 celcius at night. Yesterday, the thermometer hit 21 degrees.......
Seb has had his tetanus jab. After getting back in touch with the doctors, they decided to give him the 3 in 1 last Monday. Bless, he gets so excited going to the doctors. Not sure he will anymore. I had to hold him down, and she managed to jab him right on the muscle. Poor mite, it obviously hurt as he was struggling to walk on it. He was also a cantankerous little sod for a few days after too.
Isaac is off school on his winter break this week. We went to play at McDonalds yesterday morning, and this morning we checked out Creating Artists for Tomorrow (CAT) art studios. You may remember I bought a Living Social deal for this waaaayyyyyy back in august. The boys had good fun making a mess.
After Oliver's CT scan last week, we had a follow up appointment with Dr Alexnder at the ENT department this morning. Not good. Basically Oliver has cholesteatoma in his right ear. This is where skin cells have managed to get into his ear canal behind his ear drum. Once there, they have started multiplying, and basically having a party in his ear. Because of the drum there is no where for the dead cells to go, so they have built up and kept multiplying. The doc showed me the CT scan. On his left ear, there is lovely air (black on the image) where the bones of his middle ear can still work. All you could see on the right ear was grey where the skin has built up. It has overtaken his bones, hence his loss of hearing, and also worked its way into the honeycomb bones around his ear.
Left unchecked, these skin cells will keep multiplying. They could continue to destroy the bones, and even work their way to the blood brain barrier, which would put him at a very high risk of meningitis and permenant damage. It could also destroy some of his facial nerve.
Oliver will be having an operation in 2 weeks time. They will make an incision behind his ear, and work their way in to his ear canal to cut out the excess skin cells. Hopefully, they will get it all first time round. There is a 20% chance they won't. There is also a small chance he may lose some of his taste cells (it would only be noticeable to a wine conasiour apparently), and a chance he may lose some action of his facial nerve. Again, only slim.
He will then have a follow up appointment 10 days later. In 6 months time they will operate again. Depending on what they find when they open his ear, they will either be scraping more cholesteatoma out, or will be doing reconstructive work on his bones in the middle ear, with the hope of making his hearing back to how it was.
This is scary stuff. I am glad they have caught it when they have, even if it does mean an operation. I keep wondering what would have happened if we were on the UK. Would we have been to ENT yet? Probably not. I am pretty rubbish at taking my kids to the doctors, unless they are on deaths door. Would we have had a CT scan? This problem can be diagnosed with out one, but would we even have been offered it? Who knows? Hopefully we will never have to find out.
And he is having his adenoids out at the same time….
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