Charlie had surgery this morning on his right ear to fix a hole in his ear drum. The ENT did a "complex tympanoplasty" where they harvested cartilage from behind his ear and placed it over the ear drum. He built a "scaffolding" on both sides of the graft using foam to keep it in place. This is all to ensure that his ear is functioning from now on. His hearing is diminished in that ear and it will only get worse if we did nothing. He also would be at a huge risk for nasty inner ear infections if the hole was just left there. So...

We arrived at CHOP this morning at 6:15am. When it was time to get his hospital jammies on, he thought the above picture was a funny way to wear them!
He got a few fun gifts at the hospital (one being a star wars book)...he read it to Barky (the big dog in the above picture)...Barkey went into the OR with him and watched him and kept him safe!

I was freakin' exhausted but Charlie was in a great mood so it made the morning bearable

He got his "giggle juice" and they took him back around 8:30am

The surgery was about 1hour 45 minutes long. I got very antsy after about 45minutes. He did well, the Doc is pretty confident that it's a good fix...the back of his ear looks nasty but he can't see it so that's good. He had some emergence dilerium again which was stressful and no fun. Once they took the IV out, we got our instructions and went home. He laid around almost all day. Threw up a few times, didn't eat much at all until right before bed. The morphine and tylenol with codeine kept him super comfortable all afternoon which was good. He got up and colored and painted for an hour or so and then crept back to the couch and crashed some more. He's staying home from school the rest of the week and I really hope this is his last ear surgery!


I don't know how parents cope when their kids have surgery for serious issues. I know that Charlie's ear is a relatively harmless surgery, but intubation and anesthesia scares me. It's so aweful to watch strangers wheel your child away from you, and all I could think was, "please don't let him die. Keep him safe and make it all ok"...I hope we don't have to do this again!