Oliver has had quite the year! Poor little guy. He's had some odd ear issues for a while now, really since he was about 18 months old. He's complained about hearing noises in is ears, I had a friend of mine check his ears out, thinking maybe something had gotten in there.(When I was little I got an ant in my ear for several days, and it was horrible) She couldn't see any thing, his ears looked totally normal, so we set up a loud fan for some white noise in his room, and it seemed to help for the most part. He would still wake up terrified sometimes though in the night, and started calling the sound "the boom-booms". Josh and I just thought he must be hearing his own heart beat.
A few months ago though, he had a major night trauma, woke up screaming and terrified saying he could hear screeching and loud boom booms, and in the middle of the night when everyone is still half asleep, the whole experience was a bit terrifying for me too! I resolved the next morning to take him to an ENT.
We saw a wonderful doc here, who was extremely kind, and listened to all of my seemingly crazy concerns. They did a thorough hearing screening, which he passed way above normal, great hearing! His ears looked totally normal after looking in them, so he recommended doing a dye contrast CTC, to get a better picture of what could be going on. The sad thing is that, it obviously being a dye contrast test, I new the dye would have to get into him somehow, and was very worried about having to do another I.V. This poor little guy had just had one in March for his stomach bug. It was not a fun experience for anyone involved, trying to get an I.V. into a very dehydrated 3 year old. Luckily, a wonderful child care specialist called me back and explained that they can give them some relaxation type sedative, to ease the I.V. process, and it worked like a charm. He did so well, we read stories while they got it in, he hardly even noticed. I'm so grateful to such amazing nurses and staff up at McKay Dee Hospital.
The results: He has something called pulmonary tinnitus. In short, the main artery in his inner ear is much closer to his cochlea than it should be, and it causes unusually loud sounds in his ear. The good news is that he will eventually grow out of it, as he ages the space will also increase and relieve him of the symptoms. The bad news is, he'll have to deal with this for a while. Knowing what's going on though has made all the difference. I don't feel like he's going crazy, hearing things, and Josh and I have more patience with his fears at night, and a better ability to explain to him whats going on, so he's not so scared.
What a little trooper!
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