Anyway, Cali's surgery was about two months ago. The surgery went great. They drilled through her ear drums into the bone and cleaned out all the infection. It only took about 45 minutes. A year of suffering, fixed in 45 minutes.
She was an incredibly angry baby when she woke up. It took us about an hour to calm her down enough that she wasn't trying to kill me with her feet and little fists. By then, I think our eardrums were about to burst. But we survived.
She recovered quickly, although we had to have her on the antibiotics a little longer than we thought because she was still having ear pain several weeks later. BUT besides that, amazing things were happening. Immediately we noticed she could hear. She got so excited when she heard a plane or the neighbor dog barking. Her vocabulary exploded, and all of the sudden she was saying complete sentences and asking what everything was so she could repeat it. It was incredible.
She has not had a fever since. Well, she has had a low-grade fever, once. I nearly had a nervous breakdown, thinking we hadn't fixed the problem. But I'm pretty sure it was just teeth.
After six weeks we took her in to have all the tests done again. 8 vials of blood work, an EKG, and a CT scan. She didn't even cry when they stuck the needle in for the blood work, but she did get really mad when they put the purple tie thingy around her arm.
Everything came back normal. I cried. :)
The blood work looked great. Her CRP levels and white blood cell count were normal. Her heart looked fine. Her ear drums were still a little swollen, but the infection was almost completely gone, and they were confident that she'll be fine after more time.
She has mild hearing loss, that will probably never get better, but it is sooo much better than it was. Most people hear at a 15 decibel range, and she hears at 25. But she can hear. And she isn't sick anymore. And we are soo, sooo happy.
