RAY SAT ON MY lap in that dimly lit, soundproof room, and we looked at ourselves in the mirror until a speaker on either the left or right sounded off.
When my boy heard it — sometimes a pitch, sometimes the audiologist saying, “Ray? Raaaay? Oh, oh! Oh, oh…” in a fairy godmother voice — he turned his head the direction of the amplifying speaker.
Then, as a reward for that response, a spotlight would illuminate a little, glass-encased, mechanized monkey clapping symbols above that speaker.
The audiologist working t
he booth outside the door would look at me in the mirror through her observation window.
I read her lips.
“Don’t move,” she said, to keep me from influencing the outcome with my physical responses to the sound cues.
By the time we stepped out of that room in late August, I knew that Ray got the monkey to go bananas too few times.
The report the audiologist wrote showed moderate hearing loss.
However, the doctor’s exam gave me hope that the hearing loss might related to fluid behind his ear drums, not nerve damage.
So, on Monday my boy and I showed up at Exempla Good Samaritan Hospital in Lafayette on Monday where Dr. Abby Emdur of the Longmont Clinic drained the fluid and inserted the tubes that would encourage continuous drainage.
I gladly signed on the dotted
line.
Ear tubes seemed so completely minimal compared to what Ray underwent in March — a nearly 6-hour bowel obstruction bypass surgery and 18-day recovery at The Children’s Hospital in Aurora.
But as soon as the nurse for the ear tube procedure gave me the kimono-looking hospital gown and started talking about rectal Tylenol during the recovery phase, it transported me back to then.
And I thanked God for about the thousandth time this year for putting this boy in this time and place.
In another time and place — or really
, even in a more remote or underdeveloped place in this time — Ray without the bypass surgery would have been a goner, a child unable to keep his food down to grow much past the 15 pounds he weighed then.
In another time and place, he might go through life hearing as if he were underwater.
Ray gets another hearing test in three weeks, and I hope he gets that monkey to raise a ruckus.
Hello Pam,
So sorry to hear about the things your son (and you) are being put through, I cried while reading this story. There are other remedies available. I realize how difficult it is to be in these times when we are told it is this way or no way, but the fact is that there is another way that truly heals and repairs even genetic issues. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your son today! Wishing him health and wellness, Sarah.