doctors, bosses, and normal

I’ve talked before about Monster’s disability. He was born with a hearing loss and has hearing aids. Since his diagnosis nearly 6 years ago, my life has been a whirlwind of appointments : Doctors, speech therapy, counsellors, ENT, audiology…. the list goes on and on.
For a time, there was an appointment every other week. Sometimes 2 or 3. It was exhausting – not only physically, but emotionally and career-wise, too. I am lucky to have a job that my supervisor is very understanding of motherhood and the time it requires, allows me to make-up time and switch shifts, but I wasn’t always so lucky. When all of the appointments started, my manager at the time hated me. She looked for any opportunity to drag me in her office and reprimand berate me. If I hadn’t needed the job so badly, I would have told her where she could put her job… alas – a single mom needs money to survive.
I thank God for my current Supervisor and Manager… after that experience, I will always appreciate a “boss” that doesn’t hold my child against me.

Monster has struggled with fluid in his ears for a few years now. He hasn’t had a reliable hearing test in over 2 years because there was constantly fluid or congestion.

He had tubes put in 2 ears ago, which helped for a while, but as soon as they grew over, the fluid came back. The doctors would not re-do the tubes, because it wasn’t “consistent” fluid. Every 3 months Monster would go to the Audiologist. Every 3 months she would shake her head and mutter under her breath because he would have congestion in one ear which makes it difficult for her to get an accurate reading on whether his hearing has remained at the level it was, or degenerated. Why wouldn’t they re-do the tubes? Every 3 months, the fluid was in a different ear. Frustrating.

Last week, Monster had an appointment with his Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. This is the appointment where the doctor looks in his ears, comments on the amount of fluid he has, then books an appointment to follow-up in 3 months because “if the fluid is still there, we will definitely have to re-do the tubes.”

But in 3 months, the fluid will be on the other ear and I’ll get the same speech.

Yeah. Wait for it.

“Right on – no fluid”

Huh?

I look over at Monster lying on the examination table, smiling and giving this new E.N.T., who I now LOVE, a big smile and a high five.

“None?” I ask him, hesitant because he is new, after all – and looks like he’s about 25.

“None. Been a while since you’ve heard that?” he asked with a big smile. Even the nurse looked pleased. Of course that could be because Monster was flirting with her for the whole appointment. He has a way, that little one. The force is strong in him. But THAT’s a whole other post.

Then we got whisked away to do hearing tests while we had a chance for accurate results. And they were a word I haven’t heard in some time : Normal. Well, normal for Monster anyway. While his hearing hasn’t gotten any better (and never will) it hasn’t gotten any worse in the nearly 6 years since he was born. This is just the sort of good news that I needed.

Normal.

Not a word often heard in our home. And definitely not used to describe any of us…