Surgery Needed

 The CT scan revealed a cholesteatoma in Kai's left ear.  We believe that the narrowness of Kai's ear canals combined with the damage that the ENT caused when cleaning his ear in March had caused a cyst to form.  The cyst would continually burst, hence Kai's bleeding ear and acute pain.  The cyst then developed into a cholesteotoma, which is:

An abnormal skin growth in the middle ear behind the eardrum. Repeated infections and/or a tear or pulling inward of the eardrum can allow skin into the middle ear. Cholesteatomas often develop as cysts or pouches that shed layers of old skin, which build up inside the middle ear. Over time, the cholesteatoma can increase in size and destroy the surrounding delicate bones of the middle ear leading to hearing loss that surgery can often improve. Permanent hearing loss, dizziness, and facial muscle paralysis are rare, but can result from continued cholesteatoma growth.

Needless to say, it needs to be removed, so Kai will be going in for surgery in January.

We woke Kai to go to the hospital for the CT scan.  He slept on the drive to the hospital and was pretty ornery during the whole experience.  I had been all prepared for them to sedate him, but I hoped we wouldn't have to, although it was looking like sedation would be needed at first.  I asked if they could turn off the lights in the machine, and almost instantly, he calmed down.  He stayed still enough for them to get the scan.  Yay!  No sedation!

Kai was upset until we got him back into the car, to which he fell back asleep on the way home, and for about 15 minutes when we got home.  Surprisingly, even though he refused to wake up earlier in the day, once he was awake, he was pretty happy the rest of the day.

Moral of the story: Kai likes his sleep and hates to be woken up.