Can you hear me now?

Well, Charlie went to see the ENT docs at CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philly). He's had 10+ ear infections since birth and they are getting harder to get rid of. He also seems to have a speech delay...he makes a lot of noise, sounds like he's speaking paragraphs, but very little of it makes any sense. He does say a few words consistently but he's at the level of a one year old, not a two year old. He hears us, knows what we're saying, and follows complex commands, so we know it's not his brain or his processing. So we went to CHOP to get some answers and see if tubes were going to be necessary.

The ENT docs said his right ear had some fluid but was decent looking and the TM (ear drum) vibrated when stimulated (with a puff of air in the ear...yikes!). The left ear was filled with pre-infectious fluid and the TM didn't vibrate at all. So tubes were ordered, both ears, and sooner than later.

Then we went to the audiologist to check his hearing pre-surgery and at this point he'd had 4 people do bad things to his ears. Despite this he was a trooper and let us put headphones on him, etc. Long story short, he has normal hearing in the right and significant loss in the left. He can hear all of the pitches but the volume has to be turned way up. The hope is that the surgery will prevent fluid from building up and he will have better or even normal hearing in the left. We also hope that his speech will drastically improve after surgery. If it's not at a normal level by six months post-op, we'll do speech therapy to help him along. Poor little man!

Enough of the yucky stuff, for fun news, we went to Sam, Kim and Ethan's last night for a belated Hanukkah celebration since our boy was contagious for the real thing. Following are some pics of Hanukkah fun: