The Psychology Of Ear Tubes

The "I Love School" streak has finally died with Micah. I won't complain about this for a few reasons. First of all, it lasted a whole month. That is a whole month minus a day longer than its ever lasted in his entire school career. And he may still love school, really, but it's probably our fault that he's currently not doing well there. He's overtired. Its pathetic when we just can't get him to bed at a reasonable time, but there it is, plain and simple. So maybe if he got rested, he'd be back to loving school again. Or at least being good in school, which is pretty much the same thing.

Along with his overtired thing, other issues tend to arise. Sensory issues, for one. A chilly and stunningly beautiful fall day was enjoyed by Somerset County residents today, until Micah got off the bus, and then the spitzy rain started. Not a full-on rain, mind you, but just the "you'll get wet enough to know you've been rained on if you're out long enough" kind of rain. It is especially annoying when you have to walk half a block to the doctor's office from the parking lot. Which we did.

And that, too, was not good. Micah doesn't like getting wet by rain. It's a sensory thing for him. And he doesn't like having his ears looked into for the same reason. Sensory issues are not fun for anyone. He's mostly overcome almost all his issues, but sometimes they just flare up for no apparent reason. And sometimes they flare up because we fail to get him to bed at a decent hour for too many nights in a row.

Clearly, everything is our fault here.

After being rained on, we subjected Micah to having his ears looked at. He sat as well as could be expected, after bribing him with a hot dog and pop. (We have no health morals here.) After sitting for the inner ear test, he was rewarded by being allowed to play in the almost-sound-proof room. That was when I realized we chose wrong for his Wish from the Sunshine Foundation a few years back. We should have wished for a sound proof room for our home. If that's wrong, I'm not sure I want to be right. If you choose to turn me in for these thoughts, I'd first ask you to spend a week with that loud boy. And it isn't like I asked for it to be locked only from the outside or anything.

Anyway...

So all testing and visual exams concluded that Micah's 12th set of ear tubes are firmly in place and working well. You guys, it's been 10 months that those have hung in there. We are nearing his all time record of 12 months. Perhaps the dozenth set is the magic number for him!

Except. Because there's always that.

We hate sedating that poor child so very often, so when he's going in for ear tubes we coordinate with every doctor we can to have any procedure done that needs to be done. This time, he needs dental work done. The dentist has been oh-so-patiently waiting to get inside Micah's mouth and take care of some things, and at this point it looks like we'll just have to sedate our boy simply for dental work. Not that it's any worse than sedating for just ear tubes, but my word. The one time we actually wouldn't care if the tubes came out or not, and there they are, firmly planted and working like a dream. Maybe that was the key all along - actually WANTING them to fall out. Who knew ear tubes worked on reverse psychology?