one drunk kid

We are here in California and Robby just went back to the surgery room. He was given verced (spelling?) to make him calm down. Actually, it affects the body like alchohol so he is acting fairly drunk right now. It is actually pretty funny. :) He should be in surgery for two to three hours and then a hour or so in recovery. The doctor said he will be out of it most of today, but by tomorrow afternoon he should be back to normal with some mild pain.

We had a change of plans thanks to our insurance. They have decided as a policy that children yonger than five don't need a bone achored hearing aid, so they won't cover the proceedure. What that means is that we will get him the same hearing aid in the next few weeks only it will be worn on a head band or attached to a baseball cap. Then in six months we will have the bone anchored one put in. Luckily that is a surgery that any qualified ENT can do, so we will have it done in Columbus. We think it is poetic justice that the insurance will have to pay for two surgeries and two hearing aid systems just because they wouldn't cover the one proceedure for six months. Some time I will blog about our insurance issues...it is a long story.

Today Robby is having the atresia repair, basically the building of an ear canal. Yesturday when they did a hearing test we got some exciting results. With a child of four, even one without language issues, they have trouble getting the full range of results; but we do now know that at least one ear/hearing nerve works at a 5 decible level. This is normal hearing!! It will be exciting to see what he can hear once the surgery is over. Dr. Roberson said that he should have improvent immediately, then as he heals and the packing comes out his hearing will increase. Exciting times for him.