hardofhearingchildren.com by PAM Candlish MLS
"What did you say?" "Eh?" "WHAT did you say?" "MM?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" oh "PARDON ME!"

A Review of Middle Ear Fluid and Otitis Media, just in time for school.

Back to School.

Reid has finished high school. With the exception of the three years when I was working after university and before kids, and the first five years of my oldest child, my life flows around  school systems. I consider September 1 to be the first day of a New Year, celebrated with gifts of pencils, pens, coloured pencils ( my favorite) rulers, geometry sets, binders,  clean sheets of lined paper and a new school bag if needed.

Nursery Schools to Day Care.

I went to Miss Buttonshaw's kindergarten at the age of 2 because I took a dog's bone away from her, growled, and bit the dog. My family felt I needed more humans around.  My nursery school did not tell my parents how many days I was allowed to skip. My grandson's speech was slow. He has been in a speech-enhanced day-care for a year. He has a formal program, assessment of progress. He is not allowed to skip school, and as he is already at his max days absence for the family vacation, my daughter had to bring a letter from the audiologist to the day-care  stating that Jonathan had been at the audiologist last week.

My Grandson Has fluid in one ear

 Jonathan has perfect sensori-neural (SN) hearing and fluid in one ear in summer which is not so good because summer is usually the best time for fluid. The ENT wants to put in tubes, of course. Barbara put it off so Jonathan would able to swim without plugs in his ears. The audiologist remarked on now nice Jonathan's eardrums looked without any scarring. It really is sad that we have so much technology for hard of hearing and deaf people and yet we still cannot get rid of fluid in some children's ears. I think the doctors who say it is so common that we can ignore it because of anti-biotic abuse in the past should not be doctors. Each day with fluid in the ears takes away from language learning.

A Fast Review of 20 Years of Fluid in the Ear.

Since Reid was born with a glue ear, he had a myringotomy and Brain Stem hearing test when he was 5 months old. The hearing test revealed an unequal SN hearing loss in both ears, hearing aids were prescribed and in Reid's ears in 24 hours thanks to Pete Kelleher, a wonderful hearing aid dealer in Toronto. The ENT wanted to put in tubes, and I refused. The myringotomy did not clear Reid's ear canals, so the next operation was to put in tubes. The tubes fell out and had to be replaced. Finally he had a steel grommet instead of the tube in one ear. As a adult the scarring on his ear drum is an additional hearing problem.  The doctor refused to waste the medical system's money doing a hearing test on Reid without the tubes in his ears. When the tubes went in, the doctor declared the child had normal hearing and took away his hearing aids. The doctor told me I was a hysterical mother who wanted the child to be deaf and have hearing aids and refused to order any more hearing tests for a year.

A year later, we changed hospitals, and started over. In those days children had to have no conductive loss from fluid for the SN hearing test. Many times Reid and I went to the audiologist, had a tympanogram and were sent home.

In the 20 years which has passed, fluid in the middle ear is either just as bad a problem or worse. There have been more good attention paid in the family doctor's office with tympanogram meters to middle ear fluid. , I have Ross's grandfather's otoscope,  the tool used to look in the ear ,which merely lit the murky depths of the ear canal to the drum.  Today,  the otoscope provides a brilliant view of the ear canal ear drum and beyond, it is easy to see fluid behind the ear drum.

Treating fluid in the Ear, Otitis media, Middle Ear infection

We have many schools of thought from 3 months of antibiotics ( two different) and decongestants to completely ignoring a middle ear infection. I have never agreed with the ignoring suggestion. One of  my ENT's told me that his hospital had an emergency ear infection in a child in the middle of the night, which was ignored. By the time the child was taken to the hospital, the infection has whooshed up to the child's brain, and the child died. It may be completely boring to the doctors to treat ear infections as important, but all it takes is one dead child to rule out inaction.

Pain sometimes, No Pain sometimes

Babies and children cry when their ears hurt. They can also have lots of fluid obscuring hearing and no pain. The perfect middle ear has air behind the ear drum.  Any fluid or  infection.is meant to drain from the middle ear through the eustachian tube which runs between the middle ear and pharynx. Babies have straight horizontal eustachian tubes, when the child gets older, the head growth causes the eustachian tubes to slant downwards a bit.    Pain is always an indicator of trouble. I do not agree with giving pain killers to babies with ear infections at least until the baby has been seen by the doctor, and given a treatment to use.Parents can tell when the normally healthy child is sick. It is much harder to know when the sick child is getting sicker. Often the parents are really tired at that point and fall asleep. You should have a thermometer or two, and take the child's temp and write it down. If the fevers rises, take the child to the hospital right away.

This is an article on Otitis media from ASHA. http://www.kidsource.com/ASHA/otitis.html ASHA recognizes the importance of conductive hearing loss from middle ear problems.

http://www.mercola.com/2001/jan/14/whistle_blower.htm. This is an interesting  article about doctors researching antibiotics for middle ear infections, using the same evidence to prove opposite out comes, and it point out that the researchers can be supported by the drug companies which make the drugs which they are researching. It was a big study, at the time that only some doctors realized the problems of antibiotic abuse.

Use the Ling Sound Test at 20 Feet Daily to Check  the Child's Conductive Hearing

The Ling Sound test is one of the more important tools for telling how the child's ears are working today. A child with normal hearing hears all the sounds. A child with fluid in the ears hears less and less. If you regularly use the Ling test at home AH EE OU M SH SS and a password from 20 feet,. the child should clap to all the sounds, or repeat what they hear you say. If the child is mssing the SS and SH the child has fluid. If the child is not hearing at 20 feet, try again at 10 feet. If the child is not hearing at 10 feet, there is no point in going to school because the child is not going to magically develop hearing at school.  Make an appointment at the doctors as soon as possible.

The Rest of the Audie Visit

The babies hear perfectly. Barbara hears perfectly. I had a few changes made to my hearing aids, but what I really wanted to do was have more spread on the volume, and it was already set for the most spread. I wanted to turn the hearing aids down as much as the ads are louder than the programs. Reid 's hearing has not changed.

Reid part of Hearing Research

Reid is participating in a hearing research at the University of Western Ontario which is trying to find out the relationship of the testing which the newborns are having to how they really hear, as they realize that they are guessing rather than knowing. Reid had a baby hearing test while asleep, then two more hearing tests that day, contributing to furthering the knowledge of baby hearing testing.

Let's make this year cleaner for the children's noses and ears. As a start, not every parent needs to drive the SUV to school to pick up the child. The least you can is car-pool, and walking is better whenever possible.

- PAM Candlish

4 September 2004