Stories From People Who've Had an Experience With a Cholesteatoma
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Stories From People Who've Had an Experience With a Cholesteatoma
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[ Story 1 - Jeff Pittman, 18 ] |
Leslie B, lbeherns@hotmail.com
Well I guess that this story is not really about me but my son. My son is now a strapping young terror of 2. Just kidding he is a great little two year old boy who is all BOY! This all started when he was born. In the hospital they always do the hearing test to see if there are any problems at birth. The doctors said that his hearing was fine, but mother's intuition proves differently. My son's ears just did not look right to me. At every check up appointment which was almost every day for a week, then about once a week after that I also noticed that the doctors said that they had a hard time looking at his ears. Being that I was concerned from the beginning I finally got a new doctor who sent us to an ENT. This ENT was not a pediatric but did diagnosis him with collapsed ear canals. Most people just call is severe stenosis of the ear canals. Anyways he sends us to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and I think it is the best hospital ever. The doctors there want to do an exploratory surgery to see if he has any type of infection. When he gets in there he can't even fit a piece of equipment that is the size of a needle through his ear canal. At this point we are very nervous and ask millions of questions like what does this mean? He sends us for a CT Scan. Thank heavens for good doctors with great instincts. He finds in my 7 month old son a CHOLESTEATOMA!! Talk about scared out of my mind. Well we do take it one day at a time, but it is so hard. I looked on the internet but did not find what I wanted to know about it. Then surgery day comes and I ask the doctor who old his youngest patient had been. He tells us our son will be, and at over a year younger! Can you believe that our son at 8 months old is one of the youngest in the nation to have had this surgery. That made us even more scared. Well two and half hours later we have a happy little groggy boy back in our arms. I can't explain how happy we were to have such a great confident surgeon on our side. About 8 months later they did another scan and it seems that he has fluid in his ears again but they don't know if it for sure another c-toma. Hopefully not but we think it might be. He will hopefully have surgery to open up his ear canals around the age of 4 so maybe then it will actually work. After his other surgery and trying to open up his left ear canal it closed back up before we went back in for our 6 week check-up! Well I hope that this story might help some one else in the same or similar position. Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments. Good luck to anyone going through this ordeal!
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