The time has come for tubes. After birthing four kids, I finally get one who doesn’t have working innards. Well, working innard ears, anyway.

I took Johnny over to the Ear-Nose-Throat guy today, since he’s been plagued with ear infections for the past several months. I decided it was time to get him tubes. The new doctor at our pediatric practice, who just ended her residency last Fall, didn’t really resist my request for a referral. Basically, I told her I was going to see an ENT, and she would write a nice referral to make things easier on me. And she did. When you have four kids, you tend to pull rank on doctors with less experience than the age of your oldest child. It’s how things work in the real world.

Anyway…

We showed up in the ENT’s office and he was wearing one of those shiny disks attached to a leather strap wrapped around his head. You know the ones – they’re quintessential old-timey doctor garb! I didn’t know what to do when I saw it. All I wanted to do was laugh, but the good doctor didn’t seem, well, jovial, so I kept my mouth shut. But, damn! It was funny.

He proceeded to check Johnny’s ears and throat (the good news – tonsils and adenoids are good and require no extraction). Then, we discussed John’s history, including the C. Diff. infection caused by the antibiotics. The verdict? Johnny needs tubes in his ears. The bonus? The doctor is going to perform a frenectomy while Johnny is under so that we can avoid any speech impediment problems later on. If you’ve ever read anything by David Sedaris, you know why we’d be concerned about speech problems…

Beyond that, thought, the doctor was concerned about Johnny’s hearing. He had a test called a tympanogram which measures the pressure in his inner ear. Johnny’s resulting graph was flat, indicating that his ear drum wasn’t vibrating at all, and that his hearing was impaired. This, added to the five ear infections over the past 3 months and the C. Diff. infection, makes Johnny a prime candidate for tubes. I am, to say the least, thrilled. As much as it will worry me to have him under anesthesia, I will be so happy to know that we’ve done something to alleviate the discomfort he feels when he’s got an ear infection!

So, we’ve scheduled the surgery for a few weeks from now, and I’ve begged our good friends from Scotland to watch Pat and Gracie while we take Johnny to the surgery. I am going to try to get Emma to her friend Carter’s house so that she can go to school with him that morning. So many kids, so few family members in this town!

In any case, I am so happy that Johnny will be feeling better soon. Maybe now I will get some sleep!