Eiche fam

Tomorrow we have to be at Children’s Hospital at 9:30 for surgery. Not that the surgery itself is that early; no, it will be about two hours later, around 11:00 or 11:30. Most of the day will be waiting on our part – waiting for them to come and take her back, waiting for the surgery to be done, waiting as Namine is in recovery. The ear surgery is not likely to be long, but they do still need to put Namine to sleep.

I had originally thought that they would only be removing the tube from her right ear, but I have since learned that they’ll be removing both. The right eardrum has grown over the tube, thus making it necessary to be removed. Conversely, the left ear’s tube is all but falling out, so it needs to go as well. Since Namine is now sans trach, they don’t feel it’s necessary to put tubes back in Namine’s ears. So the plan is to wait and see how she does; if it looks like she still needs ear tubes, they’ll put new ones in at a later date.

This morning Namine had yet another meeting for school, this time with a preschool teacher. I couldn’t be there for this one, unfortunately, since I already need to take off work tomorrow, but Jessica told me all about it afterward. The teacher spent an hour or so testing Namine on language skills. She was very impressed with Namine’s speech. (As is anyone who knows her, since she only really started speaking after last October.) The teacher had Namine repeat words with two consonants, like “turtle,” and she was impressed by how well she is able to make different consonants. (Take that, ENT!) Ultimately, she feels confident that Namine’s intelligence, her rapidly improving speech, and her willingness to learn and grow will enable her to do very well in school.

Of course, we already knew that.