Driving With No Hands: Otosclerosis

I mentioned yesterday a little something about surgery. I really tried to not make a big deal out of it. And I’m torn about even sharing anything about it.

But I’ve been coming to this realization that the things I post here are for my family and I. I’m documenting our lives. Telling our story. And I need to be better at it.

So, let me tell you about otosclerosis.

But first I need to go back a bit. Growing up I was a swimmer and for some reason this meant that I had a lot of ear infections. It was not fun. There were times when my ear would just ooze with gunk. I would have to sit with a blow dryer to dry the goo out before I could put drops in my ears. Which thinking about it now, of course, makes me laugh. It’s all so medically advanced. Ha!

Anyway because of all those infections my hearing, just normally, isn’t that great. My right ear being the worst. Funny thing is that David has ear/hearing issues too. His left ear is worse. So we have to be conscience that when we’re sitting next to each other. Especially since I tend to mumble sometimes. Which causes issues.

I digress.

Back to me. Poor hearing. Right ear blah blah. Last year I diagnoses myself with seasonal allergies. It was the pits. And I was miserable. And I couldn’t breath. In the middle of this, one night as I was laying in bed reading my right ear just plugged up, or at least that’s what it felt like. I tried, over several days, to yawn to try to make it pop but it wouldn’t. Then I just sort of made adjustments for the lack of hearing in my right ear. Then I sort of just got used to it. And eventually it slowly came back.

And I only know this because I have my own little tests I do on myself. Like if I’m lying on my left side how well can I hear David’s breathing machine at night. You know, high tech stuff like that.

Which brings me to a couple months ago. This years weather has been ubber weird so my allergies didn’t kick in quite like last year. And yet my ear still did the whole plug up thing. This year though, I suppose, I complained about it a little bit more. Tired of hearing about it David kept urging me to go to the doctor. I finally went to see the same ENT that I take the kids too. They did a hearing test and my hearing in that ear was awful. No surprise. Then the doctor did some deep cleaning. It involved a suctioning machine. Not comfortable but I lived through it. The hearing test was repeated and it improved a little but not much.

He gave me three options of what it could be and three options of what I could do. Otosclerosis, calcification of scar tissue (from all those pesky ear infections) and one more thing I can’t remember. The only way to know which of the three it was causing my hearing loss was surgery. And only two of them could be fixed with surgery. If I didn’t want to have surgery I could wear a hearing aide or I could do nothing. I took some time to think it over and talk with David about my options. I finally decided to go ahead with the surgery.

This wasn’t the first surgery I’ve had in my life. I had a couple as a child and then I had surgery about five years ago. It was an altogether different experience. Apples and oranges really. But going through that did make me a little anxious. Even so I knew it would be an in-and-out procedure. So I was sure not to schedule anything for the next day then I figured I’d be back to normal.

The morning of the surgery, after I was all checked in and changed, about the time the nurse was putting in an I.V. is when I realized that maybe this was more than what I thought it was going to be.

The surgery lasted about an hour, or so. And it was determined that it was otosclerosis. Which is what? I’m sure you’re dying to know. It basically means one of the bones inside your middle ear has hardened. Which means it isn’t moving. Which means you can’t hear very well. The treatment then became a stapedectomy. More big words. Basically he removed the footplate from the stapes (a teeny tiny bone) then replaced it with a skin graft (from my outer ear, which means I had stitches too) then removed and replaced the joint (that’s right, I have an implant) connecting the stapes to another bone.

Coming out of the surgery was a doozy. It took me a while and when I was finally waking up I couldn’t open my eyes because I was so incredibly dizzy. Like everything-is-spinning-I’m-laying-in-bed-but-I’m-going-to-fall-over. It was crazy. After some time I was finally able to sort of sit up they let us free.

David first took me to his parents, as he had some running around to do and didn’t want me home by myself. When he came to get me he had the big kids with him. He left MT with his mom so they could do homework then took the rest of us home. On seeing me in such a state The Boy kept asking, “ok? Mama.” When we got inside he pointed me in the direction of the couch, put his arm around me and walked me there. Then he held on to me while I laid down and immediately covered me over with a blanket. He was very quiet and did his best to keep LM (who wasn’t phased) away from me. He and I haven’t been getting along very well lately so to see him show such concern and care was good for me.

I was basically on bed rest for the next 6 days or so. And it took about that long for the dizziness to subside. Oh the dizziness. I can’t even describe what that was like. As I said I wasn’t really expecting that type of recovery. It was humbling to say the least. Fortunately David was able to take time off work and do things like cook and wash my hair.

Just last week I went for a follow up appointment and my hearing has improved! So it was worth it. The doctor even said he expects my hear to improve even more. Before going to the doctor I knew that it was getting better because the kids are. So. Much. Louder. Also I keep doing my own little tests and can see such an improvement. So much so that maybe I’m hearing too good.

Congratulations on make it this far. I will now give you few, non-related to this whole ordeal in anyway, pictures.