Araya=Awesome!

Many of you may recall that about three months after Araya arrived from Ethiopia, one of the first things that needed attention was his ears.  They had been chronically infected, full of scar tissue and an ear drum that was ruptured, which required treatment.  Araya's hearing was very poor in one ear and not the best in the the other....so we did a major ear repair in the Fall of 2008...we were able to get out of the hearing aids, which was a huge deal for Araya.  Anyways, we had been really pleased, then we had a change.  Araya's hearing was slowly decreasing again.  We really were not sure what was going on, so, his dr. (whom we think is great) thought that we needed to do some exploring.  It had been a huge challenge for Araya to wear hearing aids in the first place, and the thought of going back to them was not something that he was real excited about... Yesterday Araya and I arrived at the hospital at 7:15 a.m...He was once again a trooper.  He had been in surgery about 2 1/2 hours and I was getting a little nervous.  I was just going to go and ask about him...his doctor came out...Yeah!  Well, we went into the surgery hoping that we could find something to fix, but also hoping it would be an easy fix.  This is what the ENT found.  Araya had a little growth in the ear, it appeared as though it was pushing on one of the inner ear bones, and those bones were already fragile, due to past infections.  It had started to erode the bone, so the bone was removed and replaced with a new bone!  Araya also needed to have some skin removed from behind his ear and placed in the ear for some new tissue growth...it is amazing!
The incus, malleus, and stapes are the bones of the middle ear. They are the smallest bones in the human body. The three bones are connected by hinges and are levers that carry the vibrations collected from the eardrum to the inner ear. The mechanical advantage gained in this system increases the volume of the sound 5 decibles, or about 7 times.  The stapes was the bone that was removed and replaced, we are so hopeful that this will be the answer to the hearing loss.

I will say that Araya handled this so well, his head/ear are wrapped to protect the ear, he tells me about every 3 hours that it hurts...I give him some good drugs and he sleeps for an hour, then he has about 2 more hours of no/little pain, then we start the cycle again.  Araya will be out of school for the week, his sister Morgan took great care of him today!  For now I am enjoying sitting next to Araya reading some of his homework to him.  Thankful to be his mom!