Thursday, January 22, 2009

Tubular dude.

When I say the word Tubular I don't think of the shape, I think of surfers. And on to the real reason I'm posting.

Ephrim had ear tubes put in today. This is his third set of tubes. Ear tubes are very common with cleft palates. They are pretty common for children without cleft palates. Here is my interpretation of why cleft palate kids need tubes.
The Eustation Tubes (number 7) are a little tunnel from the middle ear to the back of the throat. Fluid drains from the ear through these tubes. The eustation tubes are held open or closed with muscles. The muscles of the palate somehow affect this. I'm not sure if they are the same muscles or not.. if you know please tell me. So the boy's palates don't work and therefore the muscles that control the eustation tubes don't work. The tubes lay open all the time and whenever the kids throw up his middle ear gets full of stuff... and it doesn't drain properly.

Ephrim's hearing was very impared. That was our cue that he needed another set of tubes again and when he had his hearing test in Vancouver they agreed. So in he went this morning. He was very calm and I was very proud of how well he did. Ephrim has never reacted well when coming out of anasthetic. He becomes very wild and borderline violent. This is pretty common for kids and if you've ever seen Ephrim have a tantrum you wouldn't be suprised to watch him come out of anasthetic. Kids react very differently to the feeling of "waking up". Adon was all smiles and very peaceful and the nurses loved him. If Ephrim has to have tubes again and is much bigger, Dalen may have to come with us to keep him from hurting himself. He did however get back to normal much faster than last time and he responded to my voice. I'm starting to realize that it's also a self control thing. If he had good reason he could calm down. I can remember waking up from anasthetic after my heart surgery and being very confused and feeling like I was in a cloud. If a person was high strung or didn't have much self control I can see how this would make you feel violent.
Here he is in his fabulous hospital atire.
This picture shows the numbing cream that they put on their hands so that having the I.V. in won't hurt. They cover the cream with little "windows" and then the kids get to pick stickers to put on top. I forgot to prep Ephrim about getting an I.V. and by the time I realized it he was too distracted to pay attention. He would have gone to sleep before they put it in so when he woke up it made him very upset and he would not calm down until they took it out. He didn't even want a bandage on his hand.Here he is once we got home. He wasn't into having his picture taken before then. I was able to keep him still for about two hours. Now he's totally back to normal. He didn't need any pain medication at all. Tubes are a very simple procedure, they don't even go under a full anasthetic.

Ephrim loved being the star and unfortunately isn't coping to well with us not giving him everything he wants. But he's very good otherwise ;)

2 comments:

Gwen said...

Oh, my goodness, that is the cutest hospital gown I've ever seen!

Anita said...

I'm so glad it went well! It's hard to see our kids hurting, even if we know that the hurt will help them.
It's too bad we couldn't have met up for coffee at Children's, but I have to admit I'm extremely happy I'm not still there :)