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I’m finding it rather amazing that I can remember so much detail doing it in this short burst manner. Putting our history down in chronological order revives many memories. Yet, there is much that I’d left out. Forgotten until writing more, or going back and reading.

One of the more important details I’ve left off was S’s ears.

I wrote about his infections but I didn’t write about the fall out. Shortly after his first birthday we saw the ENT for the first time. He said that the problem was severe enough for tubes. Tubes was far more common then than now, but I think even now, with today’s guidelines, he’d still have gotten the tubes.

He was scheduled for surgery shortly after the new year. January 1991 was the first time I had to arrive at 6 am with a baby who had not been allowed to eat since midnight. How do you explain to your 1 year old that they cannot have anything to eat or drink when they wake up at 3 am, or when you get them up at 5 AM. How do you tell him as you change his diaper and dress him …that not only can he not have breakfast, but he can’t even have a sip of water?

How do you look into your child’s eyes and see the pain, the confusion and think of yourself as a good mother? How do you carry through? The instinct to give him the milk and cheerio’s and call the hospital and cancel was great. But, I didn’t. Memories of holidays in the ER, middle of the night screams from pain in his ears drove me past the pain of betrayal I saw in his eyes.

I dressed him in comfy clothes. I bundled him up and D and I, in the freezing cold, drove our son to where they would give him medication that would make him, not only sleep, but could make him feel sick. To allow them to take a scalpel to his precious ear drums and place a foreign body in those ears … in hopes of saving future problems.

They called us back and he was quite angry by then. The nurses were kind, caring and gentle. They gave him the pre surgery cocktail. His little head started to bobble and my heart started to break. There is something so very wrong about intentionally causing pain, discomfort for your child, even when you intellectually know it’s for the good.

D and I went out to the waiting room after they took him from us. We talked, we paced, we stared blankly at the TV in the waiting room. There was another, more private room near by. The receptionist, seeing me stare so blankly came up to us and tell us that we were more than welcome to use that room. There were many other families there, but we were the only ones with a baby. We felt alone, isolated and scared.

After what seemed like forever, but was in all likelihood, a short time, Dr. C came out to get us. He told us that S had done just fine. The tubes were well placed. We were given a script for antibiotics to prevent another infection and told to give him ibuprofen and Tylenol for discomfort.

We were taken back to the recovery room to sit with him till he could go. The anesthesia made him terribly sick. He was throwing up and was so angry. He wanted nothing to do with me. The recovery room nurses called over to the inpatient surgery to let my sister in law know he was out. She came over and S went to her instead of to D or me. My heart broke. I did not feel betrayed by him, but I felt that my betrayal of him had damaged him some how.

After he started to wake up, was less ill, he crawled from P’s arms into mine, where he stayed (except in the car seat) for the next 12 hours.

He woke up the next morning and I carried him into the living room. He stood up and fell down. He crawled to the TV, pulled himself up and fell down immediately. It seemed he had no control over his little legs. He let out a blood curdling scream of anger and frustration.

I called Dr. M who said to bring him in. Normally, post surgical problems need to go to the surgeon, but he was so concerned that his symptoms were too much ‘like mom’s’ (mine). The absolute failure of muscles to support him.

We waited to see the doctor a very short time. He came in, checked his strength, muscle tone, reflexes and sighed a DEEP sigh of relief. He wrote in his chart that the pre medications should probably not be used on him. He either metabolized them too fast or too slow and that is why he’d been so sick, that was why he could not walk. He was still suffering the effects of anesthesia. The doctor handed him back to me, told me to push fluids and to let him know the next day how he was.

The next day, S woke up and climbed out of his crib, came into our room to wake us up. Not something we expected after the day before much less at 14 months old!

We called the doctor to tell him. The relief in his voice was almost tangible.

We thought the battle with the ears would over. It was not to be. A short 7 weeks after surgery he had another infection. This began the familiar routine of infection/antibiotics/infection/antibiotics. The difference was, they were found in the doctor’s office during office hours, not the middle of the night with sky high fevers.

When he turned 2 the ENT said that he wanted him on antibiotics for 2 months, then we’d see where we were. He went off the antibiotics shortly after Christmas. B had just been born. January 2, he got another infection and the ENT set him up for replacement tubes.

The second surgery went smoother than the first. They’d not used the pre op meds, which meant he was more alert, but at 2, his language skills were better and he understood what ‘wait’ meant. He also knew what ‘doctor’ meant. While he wasn’t happy, he did not look at me like I’d betrayed him.

We took him back to the pre op, and because they didn’t give him the medication, they allowed me to walk him back to the operating room. This, is not something I would recommend. Laying my son on the table was worse than the letting someone take him. The reality of the operation, the scalpel hit me harder.

In April, they learned he was having a bad reaction to the materials of the tubes and one of them had turned as a result. They replaced them. While this did not solve his ear infections, it did help A LOT.

Children were supposed to have one set of tubes. He’d had 3. We had no idea that we’d repeat this when he was 10 years old.