Unfortunately, my daughter’s hearing is deteriorating rapidly.

If you’ve spoken to her in the last two weeks, you’ve probably noticed this. It would be really, really hard not to notice. If you are talking to her at a normal tone of voice, she usually can’t hear you well enough to even know you are speaking to her, much less does she actually understand what you are saying. This is absolutely not her fault, but it is very hard not to get frustrated with her. Then something happens to remind you that she is the victim in all of this, like when you say, “Evie! I told you three times to pick this up!” and she says, “Huh?” in such a way that you realize that she never heard you the three times you told her, and then you just feel bad all over again.

It’s not all bad, though, it has led to some funny misunderstandings.

Kid: “I went to a birthday party, and we jumped into a pit of foam.”
Evie, horrified: “A pit of bones??”

I got so used to speaking loudly around her, that I find myself talking loudly to everybody. Several times I found myself shouting to Sara when it was just the two of us alone in the kitchen.

I never really realized how isolating it is to not be able to hear, and how much you miss out on. Oftentimes when she doesn’t hear something, she just lets it go. I don’t know if it’s being a kid, being embarrassed about not hearing, something about her personality, or just the fact that you get tired of asking everybody to repeat everything all the time. I’m very thankful that she’s only in preschool, and thus is not really having instruction per say at school. I can clearly see how quickly one would fall behind academically.

Anyway, we could clearly see that she was experiencing some hearing loss, but we had her tested anyway. Her hearing showed normal to mild loss in one year, and mild to moderate loss in the other. It seems to have gotten a lot worse since then.

The doctors believe that it is temporary, and due to a large build up of fluid in her ears that doesn’t seem to drain, so they’ve recommended a third round of ear tubes (you can read about round 1 and round 2). The idea is that the fluid would be able to drain through the tubes, and her hearing would go back to normal. Long term, the hope is always that she will grow enough that her ears will begin to drain normally on their own, without requiring help. It hasn’t worked so far, but then again, third time was a charm with me and ear tubes when I was little.

So hopefully everything goes well and she will be able to re-join the conversation (side note, not being able to hear apparently doesn’t impede your ability to talk).

At least Ollie’s ears are okay, right? Wrong.

We always assumed that Ollie had no problems with his ears, because he had never had any ear infections. However, you only know your child has ear infections if he says he has ear infections, and if he happens to have the pain tolerance of a UFC fighter on PCP, then he probably just doesn’t mention it. Imagine our surprise, then, when he did finally complain about an ear ache, and the doctor found evidence of “chronic ear infections”.

Perhaps he inherited daddy’s ears after all, but just forgot to mention it.