The one with the nearly severed ear.

Let me start this by saying that I wrote this days ago on my phone with the handy dandy Blogger app.  If you don't have the Blogger app for your phone- don't bother getting it. It's completely worthless!  No copy & pasting allowed.  You can't pick where you want the photo to go, and when do you get a post written it refuses to post OR Save! ARGH.  Hence the reason I am now re-writing this post and possibly loosing any humor that was in the first telling.  Again, I say ARGH.

So this was meant to be the story of Spoiled Princess' ear and how it is that she ended up with it nearly severed.  It's really not as gloriously gory as it sounds but who could resist a title like that?

Several months ago, Spoiled Princess started complaining of pain in her right ear (yes the particular ear is important for later).  It started out after swim lessons but eventually it was hurting on days that she didn't have swim lessons.   So off to the doc we went .

Dr H, our absolutely favorite pediatrician - so beloved that my nearly 20yo still goes there b/c she doesn't want to lose him, came in and asked what was wrong and what we should do about it.  Spoiled Princess said that her ear hurt and Mom said we could give a shot in the ear or two in the butt to fix the problem.  (Mom is nice like that!).  I also piped in with the thought that we could just cut it off.  Dr H agreed that we could do any of those, which would SP like to do?  She rolled her eyes at both of us and huffed that she didn't want to do any of those options.   Ha. We tried.

Once Dr H looked in both ears and reaffirmed which ear hurt, he decided that we needed to go to ENT.  You see when Spoiled Princess was around 3, she got tubes in her ears and she was still tubed in the left ear.  Dr H's theory was that right ear pain as caused by the tube still being in the left ear and not being able to adjust to the water pressure.

Off to ENT we go.  I called and made the appt- clearly stating that we needed to get a tube removed. Naturally they scheduled us with a dr who does NOT specialize in ear surgeries.  Imagine that.  So we had our initial appt, discovered that Spoiled Princess had mild hearing loss, a small hole in her right ear (the ear that hurt) and a much larger hole & retained tube in the left ear.  Yep, definitely needing surgery but of course we need to wait and have a consult with the actual dr that specializes in ear surgeries. 

3 weeks later and we finally see the dr we need who confirms that yes we need surgery.

1 week later and we are into surgery!

Boy oh boy was that rough!  Spoiled Princess did good and was so brave. She elected to get the IV and go to sleep that way vs the smelly gas. No flinching or tears!  Brave girl!   Surgery itself went well.  They put a paper patch on the tiny hole in the rt ear.  The left ear was more in depth and had a significantly larger hole which required a graft.  In order to see clearly,  the dr had to make an incision behind her ear.   I finally looked at the incision several days later and realized that it was pretty much an ear removal. LOL. That thing was hanging on just barely!

From tippy top to the bottom.

Waking up was pretty rough and some of her anxiety kicked in but once we got out of the hospital she was doing better.  Its now been 1 week since surgery and she's doing well!  She goes back next week for a check up but at least now she has a story to tell and a scar that no one will see  :)