**Welcome to our world!**
Today, the follow-up appointment with the ENT determined that Andi will need to have tubes put in her ears. The name of the surgery is bilateral myringotomy with PE tube placement.
The placement of PETs is the most common out-patient surgery done in the United States. ...(yeah, I'm totally copying the verbage from the after visit summary)... The reason for placing PETs varies. Sometimes it is to relieve a negative pressure in the middle ear which can cause future problems. Sometimes it is to remove fluid and allow the ear to aerate itself. Sometimes it is to cut down on the frequency and severity of ear infections. (almost done copying the verbage...) By placing the PETs, we [they] hope to allow an artifical (but very useful) way of ventilating the middle ear. This allows the eustachian tube (the long paragraph above that I omitted from this post.) to literally calm down without an infection around to swell it shut again. Hopefully, by the time the PETs fall out, the body's own eustachian tube is then able to take over the function of equalizing the middle ear pressure again. 80% of children who require PETs will only need one set.
Andi's reason is because she chronically has fluid in her ears. He's going to suck the fluid out and put the tube in, to help her ears drain and aerate. One additional positive about getting this done, is that it could improve Andi's hearing in her good ear another 5-15 decibles...which would be huge on the scale of speech sounds. We shall see.
Andi's surgery will be scheduled in the next couple of weeks. It doesn't require an IV or anything more than a gas mask that knocks her out, but, it's still a surgery. He said it's a relatively quick procedure and it really only takes about five minutes to do his bit with the ears.
He also scoped her nose. He said the passageways are still open, but they are small. He's going to talk with their nose specialist about her small passages and chronic runny nose and get back to me. My guess is that person will want to take a gander, or they'll send us back up to the ENT surgeon at the hospital. We shall see.
Sadly, Andi did not take a liking to this Dr. today. It's pretty funny, yet kind of sad that she hates all Dr's now. She gets around them and more often than not, freaks out on them. Screaming and crying... only calming when they go away. I hope I don't start doing that too, as I totally understand her inclination.
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