Ear Update

My angel had a follow up appointment at the ENT this afternoon. Once again, it turned out to be quite the traumatic clinic visit.



She DOES NOT like these appointments, it takes three people to hold her still so the doctor can work on her tiny little ear.



Everything the doctor sees is magnified on a TV screen. I had to take pictures, because it's fascinating to see. They are able to magnify her ear so close I could see the tube.



Here they are working on cleaning the gunk and dead skin out. There was once again a lot to clean out, but not quite as bad as it was Monday. So we'll take any improvement we can get. Chelsea ... not HAPPY!




Once again we saw a different doctor. It seems that each doctor only works once a week, so it's next to impossible to get the same doctor twice. She did clean her ear very thoroughly, it took more than 10 minutes. That's a long time when Chelsea is screaming, arching and crying. Once this doctor got that last stubborn piece of gunk out, she got a better view of the tube in Chelsea's ear. I guess the other doctors never got this clear of a view, b/c we were surprised to hear that the tube wasn't even in anymore, it was trying to come out on it's own! It's normal for ear tubes to fall out in 6 months to 3 years. She's had hers a little over a year. The doctor recommended us letting her just remove the tube and she assured us it would be easy to do. She said it might cause a little pain at first, but she was confident it would make all of this infection / mold clear up quicker. Of course I wanted the okay from our oncologist first. It seems I can't blow my nose anymore without the approval of the oncologist! Dr. Guest agreed it would be the best thing to do since we were already in the office. Surprisingly the tube was a cinch to get out! Way less traumatic than cleaning the ear. Of course there was more goo and gunk to clean out once the tube was out.

Here's the tiny little tube that was in her right ear! (Ignore all the gunk! Ewwww!)



Now here's the kicker. While we were there they looked up her files on the computer to see what her counts were today (her ANC was 238 by the way, platlets and hemoglobin are recovering well and white blood count was 1.4). They found more than her lab results in the computer though. Apparently the culture they took of Chelsea's ear on Monday before we left, has grown mold! This just happened today, nothing had grown yesterday that's why we hadn't heard from the oncologists. This isn't what we were hoping for, but it is what it is, so we need to figure out what to do next. Her counts ARE recovering, but slowly. My main concern is starting the next round of chemo and having this ear problem come back and haunt us. While she's not showing signs that the mold has spread, i would feel more comfortable with more difinitive tests. I made that clear with our oncologists. No, I'm not a doctor, but it seems to me it would be very hard for the mold not to have spread since her counts were ... well NOTHING ... for so long. I don't know how it could have stayed contained in the ear. Again, I'm not a doctor though, I just want the ENT people to have a good understanding of the oncology aspect of the situation. The ENT doctors keep telling me they see this all the time, and it can be cleared up with ear drops ... well that's probably true, but how often do they see it in kiddos with an ANC of ZERO? Yeah, can you see why I'm worried? Our oncologist is going to meet with the team and the infectious disease doctors tomorrow and call me to let me know what our "plan" will be. I hope to have an update for you tomorrow night!

Finally, here's some of what I've been seeing in my princess lately. I hate seeing her this way, but I know this will all be behind us soon. I just have to keep telling myself, we can do this!