Appointment Update

We had a quick and easy appointment today at Cincinnati Children's. We got the results of Silas' CT scan and for the most part, we are very pleased with the news! Without getting too technical, I'll give you an overview of what we learned today. Silas's left ear has most of the internal ear structures that a "normal" ear has. He has all three of the little bones that sit behind the eardrum and also has a cochlea. The main problem with this ear is that his ear canal is not open. There is somewhat of an opening, but it is below where a normal opening would be. It will probably be possible to create an opening in this ear and we are very hopeful that Silas will be able to have close to normal hearing in this ear!!

The right ear is less formed. There is no ear canal at all. There is a slight opening, but it goes through bone. He is missing one of the three little bones behind the ear drum. This is an issue because these bones vibrate when a sound is heard. When the bones vibrate, the fluid in the cochlea vibrates and that is how we hear. Without this little bone the sound has to travel through soft tissue to the cochlea and most of it is lost. He does have the cochlea in this ear too. There is a chance that we can do surgery on this ear as well, but it is much riskier. The doctor would have to put something directly beside the cochlea, this type of surgery can run the risk of deafness if the cochlea is damaged or exposed in any way.

One or both of these surgeries would be done after the external reconstruction if we decide to go that route. We are both strongly leaning towards reconstructing the outer ear just to give Silas the best possible life. Most people don't even notice it, but as he gets older, I do not want him to be self-conscious about it. There are two different ways to reconstruct the outer ear as well. One is the rib-graft reconstruction which would require 6-8 surgeries. The other is the Medpor which would require about two surgeries. I'll save the details on those for another post!

We have a lot of decisions to make over the next few years. Silas will likely begin his surgeries when he is around 5 years old. We need to decide which doctor we are most comfortable with. We really like the doctor in Cincinnati, but there is also a doctor we are very interested in who is in California. He only does ear reconstructions. We will need to choose which way we want to reconstruct the outer ear. We will decide if we want Silas to wear a BAHA or to try have surgery to open up his ear canal on his left ear. Depending on if the left ear surgery works, then we will determine if we want to do surgery on his right ear. Whew! Lots of information, but we are at peace about everything and are very glad we have plenty of time to research and sort everything out.