Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throats

Doctors, doctors, doctors.  I'll be totally honest, before Hailey was born, I avoided all doctors as often as possible.  Yes, I kept all of my appointments when I was pregnant because it involved another person.  I have always had "white coat syndrome".  My blood pressure jumps 20 points just walking into a doctor's office. 

Having Hailey has pushed me out of that comfort zone.  Hailey has been relatively healthy.  I always say relatively because most people freak out about her going into heart failure and having open heart surgery.  I have said before we are fortunate that Hailey only had open heart surgery.  I get a lot of looks for that comment.  Yes, it was serious.  Yes, it was the most scary thing I have ever gone through.  No, I don't wish it on anyone.  Heart failure like hers doesn't happen overnight.  It is a gradual thing that we watched happen over a couple of months.  It is a common procedure and Hailey had no complications.  She was in the hospital for only 76 hours...including surgery time.  It was fixable and it requires annual follow up appointments with her cardiologist.  She should never have another issue in regards to her heart defect. 

That being said, the key to keeping her healthy is maintaining her health care.  It does include going to different specialties every year or every 6 months to make sure everything is still working properly.  In the past couple of weeks, Hailey has seen both the ENT (ear, nose and throat) and her ophthalmalogist.

Let me start with, Hailey HATES going to the doctor.  Hailey hates everything but leaving the office!  Ophthalmology is a huge challenge when she needs her eyes dilated because the appointment is twice as long and she has to behave twice as long!  We have noticed that her left eye crosses occasionally.  After a long appointment, we do not have glasses yet but we need to return in 4 months.  He did see the crossing, but patching won't work.  She is slightly near-sighted, but that is not uncommon for children her age.  If I told him she keeps hats on and she LOVES wearing sunglasses, he would have gone forward with glasses because they wouldn't hurt anything.  However, she HATES both and I would be replacing and searching for glasses every 5 minutes, we have tabled glasses for awhile.  The eye crossing is NOT affecting her vision so glasses aren't a necessity at the moment.  We'll see what the next appointment brings.

Last week, we went to her ENT appointment.  I think that the scheduling department thought I was crazy when they asked what was wrong with Hailey and I responded with "nothing".  The majority of the children with Ds that I know have seen an ENT by this point.  I actually was starting to worry that Hailey had not seen one and I wanted to make sure that we were not missing something.  Obviously, hearing is a key component to Hailey's speech.  We don't want to take a chance with it.  I loved Hailey's ENT!  He watched her the entire time we talked about her health history.  He seemed perplexed as to why we were there, too.  I explained and he understood.  Before examining her, he said that he didn't expect to see any issues.  She babbled nonstop and he understood several words that she had said.  Her tonsils were a 2 out of 4 which he said was good and not considered large.  We moved to the microscope room to check out her ears.  Her canals are not teeny tiny like a lot of children with Ds.  He agreed that our pediatrician should not have an issue seeing Hailey's eardrum.  He had to clean out a little bit of wax and then had a perplexed look on his face.  The ENT wanted to have a tympanogram on both ears.  The audiologist didn't get the entire order so they did both the tympanogram and the hearing test.  They assured me that we wouldn't be charged for the hearing test because it was their error.  The fabulous news is that Hailey did great with the hearing test.  The tympanogram was inconclusive on her right side.  They didn't get a great reading.  It could have been Hailey not cooperating...it could have been a little bit of fluid behind the ear drum.  The doctor said that it isn't a concern because of the results of her hearing test (he probably would have ordered it after the results of the tympanogram anyway!).  It is not affecting her hearing.  We go back in a year.  So....we added two more appointments onto 2014's calendar. 



These pictures have absolutely NOTHING to do with her appointments, but I had to share.  Last night, I was making dinner and I hear a "thump".  Hailey threw her baby down and disappeared.  She reappeared with a diaper and the wipes.  She sat down and attempted to change her baby's diaper.  Neither of the boys ever had a doll so this is new territory for us :-)  It was the sweetest thing. 

Apparently, Hailey's face needed wiped, too :-)

A little blurry, but she even threw away her diaper and wipe when she was finished with it all!