Recovery

A quick update...

Here are some pics before surgery. They were taken the morning of the surgery. It always seems that Jack's ears are a little puffy in the morning, so the definition of his ears is not as good as it usually is. I didn't think about that before I took the pics.


















Then, here is a picture of Jack watching "Cars" on Dr. Novak's (the anesthesiologist) ipod while in pre-op.

















Dr. Novak has a 3 year old himself and was very compassionate. We also saw Dr. Champeau (Jack's anesthesiologist from surgery 1 and 2) in the pre-op room and he remembered Jack. He was there to take care of the other little boy. I have just loved all the people at the surgery center. They are all very caring.

So, the surgery went well. Dr. Roberson adjusted the ear drum on the right ear. It seems that Jack had some scar tissue in his left ear canal and once Dr. Roberson removed that, the canal opened up nicely. Dr. Reinisch added some skin behind the left ear, but did not move the ear up as we thought might be needed. Dr. Reinisch also removed two scars from Jack's scalp (they were from the cups that we used to protect the ears after the first surgery on each ear). Dr. Roberson was very optimistic that this would do the trick. We are very hopeful for less skin shrinkage this time around.

After surgery, Jack was not very happy about the bandage on his head. When I put him in the car, he told me he had to have it off because he could not hear his DVD player well enough. I thought that was kind of funny that my child who could hardly hear a thing a few short years ago was complaining about the bandages affecting his hearing....



















Jack is recovering very quickly from this surgery. He is running around like a crazy boy and we are continually telling him to slow down. He had a little more pain this time because Dr. Reinisch did not use the pain pump on the skin graft site, but we just gave him Tylenol with coedine a few times and that seemed to make it all better.

I just sent some pics to Dr. Roberson and Dr. Reinisch. The plug has fallen out of Jack's right ear and the left is oozing a little bit of blood. Both Dr's emailed back right away and Dr. Roberson indicates that we need to put a plug back in, so we will need to pay a visit to Palo Alto tomorrow or Thursday. Dr. Reinisch says the sponge looks good.

Here are the pics I sent the docs: