EARS TO YOU

We kept hoping they would go away. Infection after infection after infection, and nothing seemed to be the be-all, end-all cure for what I thought was just a mild case of ebola.

Kidding, of course. I’m talking about my 14-month old daughter, who has spent no more than about three weeks of her young life without an ear infection.

You see, it all started, well, at birth, which is about when she got her first ear infection. That was the first in the line of about 72 million ear infections she would get over the next short while. Each time we would go to the doctor and he would prescribe some antibiotics, clearing them up just long enough to harvest a new ear infection. It reached the breaking point when we took her in and our doctor gave the following diagnosis: “Ewwww.” Apparently, some ear infections go beyond physician vernacular and are just simply gross. He recommended that we go with tubes, a route that we had discussed many times but had kept putting off in the hopes that the Ear Fairy would visit and cure the woes. Alas, the Ear Fairy never came, although now that I think about it, the Ear Fairy could be a fairly scary childhood creation, especially if they liken it to the Tooth Fairy.

But I digress. For those of you not familiar with tubes, the procedure is simple. Or so they say. I was reading an old copy of People when it was explained. But my wife assures me that it is indeed simple.

Then our next step was to meet with the physician who would perform the procedure. It was there that my wife found the most solace and comfort. But not from the doctor. Oh, it’s not that he did anything wrong. In fact, he was great. He filled us in with detailed information on the procedure and the general process, and explained everything quite thoroughly (or so my wife said; this time it was Reader’s Digest).

No, my wife’s comfort came from another mother who was there with her young son, Kyle. Kyle was getting his second set of tubes set in, as well as his adenoids removed. (Ah, I remember the old Atari game, “Adenoids.” Those were the days.) My wife began talking with the other mother, who proceeded to fill her in on all of the information from a mother’s perspective, rather than a medical perspective. She explained the nuances of the check-in processes and the effects of the various medications and a whole host of other things that seemed to put my wife at ease.

The next morning, we arrived at the hospital at around 6 a.m., which is too early for pretty much anyone to be functioning properly. I think all surgeries should be scheduled for around 11 a.m., allowing the doctors and nurses to sleep in and get a full complement of sleep.

But we were there on time, nonetheless. And, in the prep room right next door were Kyle and his mother. His mother continued to dispense matronly and soothing advice to my wife, all the while I paced back and forth complaining about how I couldn’t find a coffee machine. Methinks that some of the other patients were getting close to beating me with their IVs.

Soon, a nurse came in and gave my daughter a “cocktail” to help calm her down prior to surgery. About 10 minutes after she was given the drugs, she sat there with her eyes at half-mast, her mouth gaped open, staring at the wall, occasionally chuckling to herself. When you would call her name, she’d flop her head over to where the sound was coming from, and then continue on past you, chuckling some more. Note to Allie: don’t ever try and drink before you are of legal age. You will never be able to hide it.

Eventually, it was time to turn our daughter over to hospital staff. We were told to go and wait in the waiting room, and we would be called when she was done. I barely had time to complain about the lack of quality, outdated reading material when we were called back. 15 minutes. Wham, bam, here’s your tubed-daughter, ma’am.

When Allie woke up, she was more than a little miffed about the whole thing, and let everyone within about a 17-mile radius know it. She dozed off back to sleep shortly thereafter, right around the time Kyle’s mom came into recovery to wait on Kyle. Again, she put my wife at ease. Sure, the doctors and nurses were providing great care and comprehensive information. But a mother-to-mother chat is sometimes what is needed to calm the nerves.

In all, the procedure went off without a hitch, and everyone from start to finish was nothing but spectacular. Everyone took such great care of my daughter (and my wife), which made the whole thing so much easier. There’s a lot of anxiety that builds up when you take your child for any medical procedure, no matter how minor. I’m just glad it all went smoothly. Hopefully, she has had her last ear infection. That will be wonderful news for so many reasons, but mainly because I’m kinda scared of the Ear Fairy.