smart ears

I have no idea if I blogged about this a few months ago or not. But, at his four year old check-up, Little B failed his hearing screening. A couple months later, we re-screened and he failed in both ears. Granted, in the midst of all these screenings, he'd had various colds and ear infections which we were told could easily contribute. He needed a solid four weeks between any cold-like problems and the next testing. With that, we were sent off to an ENT.

Said appointment was this morning. My father has some hearing loss that has been evident for many years (if only HE'D be seen!), and my husband and I each have/had at least one grandparent with hearing aids. So, I went very realistically to this doctor's office, truly ready for whatever he might say. We've had so much going on this year, it was just part of the melting pot at this point.

Our morning started slow. I was up late last night (getting stuff ready to drop off for a big consignment sale), and hit that snooze button a few times. Ahem. I had been able to print off the paperwork from their website, and had it filled out and in the diaper bag already, so we arrived just in time for that 9:30 am appointment. Or not. Can we say it was supposed to be at 9:00 am??? Oops. I've had various 9:30 appointments for a couple weeks and it was just stuck in the brain. A reminder call AND the correct time on my calendar and I still arrive late. They were very gracious, though, and saw us anyway (it takes up to EIGHT weeks to reschedule!).

This is a practice that specializes in children, and they were fabulous. My nervous little boy was soon at ease and a champ. He laid still while they puffed air on the eardrum, removed wax, and shined lights. So far, so good...now let's go across the hall to see the audiologist. There were special "ear plugs" for his ears, a thingy over his shoulder, obviously some sounds (Little B kept suddenly shouting out "phone!" or "train!") and wah-la-- measurements on the computer magically appeared. Move to another computer, do some of that again with chirping sounds this time, and more readouts. Then a soundproof room within that small room. The audiologist talked to him on a microphone and did some games and had him repeat words. Quite the process. I had no idea!

Now the kicker. The second computer he sat at, the one that chirped, gave a charted readout (I believe it was measuring the muscle strength of his eardrum). She told Little B his ears were "drawing a picture". Holy cow. He thought that was just too cool! He was so pleased with the picture his ears drew--he had some really smart ears! He never knew his ears could DRAW. Wow...

The audiologist was so kind. Little B got to take the printout of that "picture" when we left. We had to go back across the hall to see the ENT one more time, and while the poor man was trying to talk, all Little B could do was try to show him the picture his ears drew. It's truly two small graphs that are on the upper half of the page. That's it. But he is so stinkin' cute! We left and I swear he held out his picture for EVERY person in sight to see. I felt guilty trying to move him along while these people worked...they couldn't really even see that he wanted their attention as we went down the hall, but it was cracking me up inwardly. He was so proud.

And so was I for that matter. His ears were perfect. Very smart ears, indeed.