June 17, 2012

This is the story of when Megan went deaf. The week before Dad went to Scout Camp Megan came into our bed one night and was thrashing around a little in bed (this is something she does when she has an earache, but I didn't want to ask her about it because I didn't want to bring it up....she struggles a bit when her ear hurts). Anyway she was fine the next day. Later that week I noticed that she wasn't responding when I talked her to sometimes. At first I was thinking she was just getting good at ignoring me, but as the week went on it got worse and worse. Then Dad went to Scout Camp and we were heading to Arizona. The day we left for Arizona was Sunday. In church before we left I looked over and noticed that she had liquid dried near her ear. I thought maybe she had a little drainage and maybe her incident a few nights previous were really some kind of ear infection. She wasn't complaining about anything so we went to Arizona. This week her hearing got worse and worse every day. She literally could not hear me speaking to her in a normal voice from 4 feet away. If she was looking at me she could understand more (I think from watching my lips move), but I pretty much had to start talking in a very elevated voice every time I spoke to her, and we couldn't be too far away. Her ears (both of them) drained the entire time we were there - every day and night. I called the doctor so that we could get in when we got home. We got home on Friday evening. I took her to the doctor on Monday. The hearing thing was really starting to worry me - I read up online and found that this can sometimes occur with ear infections. The doctor told me that yes, both of her ears had been infected and had burst on their own. They didn't look bad anymore, but the hearing loss may last for up to three weeks. During the remainder of that week I noticed a significant improvement and about a week later she was back to normal.