My Son's Operation.

“Now when I put this on you, you’re going to be the captain, OK? You’re the pilot. In a few seconds, you’ll be flying.” Solly seemed thrilled. The anaesthetist handed him the mask as he lay on the bed in his bright hospital pajamas, wide-eyed and curious, an IV poking into his thin skin.

Solly before being anaesthetised

Eli stood at the bedside, a little nervous, and just as the two men believed the drug to have set in, Solly opened one of his big eyes, in classic Solly style, as if to check who was tricking who as he shot a cheeky grin at the anaesthetist. “You didn’t trick me,” smiled the anaesthestist, playfully, “but close your eyes now before I bite you”.  Within seconds, Eli says, his eyes rolled back and he was out of it. 

Solomon’s Supersonic, Sensitive Hearing

Now just to side-track here, in response to a post of mine on Facebook recently where I mentioned Solly’s operation, not for shock effect, but just to gage which topic people thought it most interesting I blog about – many wrote to me in private messages, alarmed, wishing Solly well, saying things like “Poor Solly”…

Well, thank you for your kind words, however, to reassure you all, let there be no mistake – there is no poor Solly in this story. Solly is fine. He was very brave, as usual, and he was not fazed at all by his operation. On the contrary, I’d even go so far as to say that he was excited about it and felt very special overall.

And this is Solly still before drugs (you'd never guess it!)

He was back on his feet within hours, as good as new, if not instantly better, and not only that, something really incredible happened.

So there’s this video that’s gone viral in the past month (over 10 mil views!) showing a 7-week old Australian baby hearing for the first time...  you may have seen it:

Well it’s not anything like that (I just really liked that video and think it’s amazing) – but it’s somewhat similar!

Solly was by no means deaf, but only now, immediately post-operation, am I discovering the extent of how much more improved his senses of smell, taste and especially hearing, have become. He’s still getting used to this new sensation of heightened senses and before the novelty wears off, he appears unable to filter out extraneous sounds from the background. It seems unreal, but his hearing is so darn impressive, he can hear the garbage truck from a few blocks away, over the sound of the TV, well before I can (and I have excellent hearing). I tested him (with Eli and my mother-in-law as witnesses) by whispering a random number from a room well away from where he was standing, and he could call out the numbers I whispered, when neither Eli nor my MIL could hear me whisper anything! A passing bus in the street causes Solly to raise his hands to his ears and complain about the noise. He was sleeping the other night – make that snoring – while I was telling Eli a story in the kitchen about something that had happened during the day involving Solly, only for him to appear right in front of us, half asleep, asking if we were talking about him! True story!

It’s like a whole new world! A whole new Solly! The boy has super powers I tell you!

Solly has other superpowers unrelated to this specific story, which involve building really impressive things from lego. I insert this here only because he built this amazing thing while killing time in the waiting room at the hospital. Awesome, right?

So how did all of this come about, I hear you ask? Back the tuck up to about 1 year ago, and the story goes like this:

"Don't worry, he's just ignoring you," I assured his kindergarten teacher, who had hinted to me on more than one occasion now that I should really be taking my son to get a hearing test, "He ignores me too. All the time."

Six months later I would find myself sitting in on an interesting hearing test at the hospital with Solly. While I couldn't hear what he could hear in his massive headphones, I could hear what the instructor sitting opposite him was asking of him. I looked on from the side, proudly, as he diligently responded to the tasks at hand, moving colored blocks around a board and picking up different colored balls and other toy-like objects, following instructions and listening for cues. It was pleasurable, almost fun. “He’s aced it”, I thought, and smiled to myself, as I imagined returning to his kindergarten teacher, assuring her with full confidence that Solly really had no hearing problem.

 

“He has a significant loss of hearing”, concluded the doctor afterwards, bluntly, “most likely caused by liquid trapped in the ears.”

For as long as I could remember, Solomon had had a snotty nose. I felt assured that it was totally a normal thing for young kids to be snotty. It came as part of the whole package of kids just being sick so often as their little bodies adjusted and adapted to germ-infested reality outside the womb, not to mention being surrounded all the time by other snotty-nosed kids. Whatever doesn't kill them makes them stronger, right? It was even healthy and indeed, preferable, to have a snotty-nosed toddler over a toddler who was never sick – it would come back to bite them when those healthy infants grew up to be unhealthy adolescents, having been brought up in unnaturally overprotected cocoons of hyper-hygiene.

“Yes, this is a good thing,” I assured myself in the middle of those long nights when I would give my baby endless cool baths and cold compresses to bring down temperatures and ease hours of ear-ache related crying and discomfort. It was normal for kids to get ear infections and it was normal for kids to be picky eaters. While I didn't like it, I succumbed to the annoying "pasta without anything" requests. I guessed it was an Israeli thing. It was also normal for kids to ignore what they don't wish to pay attention to (like parents, for example), or so I thought, in just the same way that it was perfectly normal for kids to talk loudly over others. Right?

The favourite meal for every annoying kid I know: Pasta with nothing. 

It was true that my Solly, for the life of him, was incapable of talking softly. He was loud and he’s stubborn by nature, and I was fine with that, for the most part. I figured he was just like his father.

I think it was first his doctor, who surprised me when seemingly out of nowhere, at the age of around 3 and a half, before his kindergarten teacher had even said anything to me, and without any thorough checking at all, he suggested that Solly would eventually need to have his adenoids removed. Why have something removed from a perfectly healthy boy, I thought? OK so maybe he wasn't perfectly healthy, as we were at the doctors - again. But this hypothesis struck me as odd at the time, seeing as though now, we were at the doctor for something unrelated to ENT altogether, like an eye infection I think. What gave doctors the right in Israel, I wondered, or anyone here for that matter, to offer unwarranted advice on things they weren't even being consulted for? 

"He just has that look on his face," surmised the perceptive doctor – medical sophistication at its finest. "And I can hear it in his voice. He may also need tubes put in his ears. Then he won't get ear infections as often," he added, possibly sensing my skepticism.

My mother-in-law had told me how Eli had needed this procedure done too when he was a child. But Eli wasn't Solly; Eli was born with a hole in his eardrum skin as well as a host of other issues (not to mention as a baby he had his leg in a cast for 3 months because it was twisted. But that’s a whole other story!) This was about Solly and Solly was perfect. Objectively speaking, of course. Snot and all. 

But the snot was ever-present.   

Many people confuse adenoids and tonsils.  You can see your tonsils in the back of your throat but adenoids are a patch of tissue that sit at the back of the nasal cavity. Adenoids do important work as infection fighters for babies and little kids. But they become less important once a kid gets older and the body develops other ways to fight germs. Adenoids usually shrink after about age 5, and by the teenage years they often practically disappear.

Interesting Hebrew lesson: the word for tonsils is "shkedim", the same word for almonds :) 

As for ear tubes, this also turns out to be a very common procedure. The tubes are tiny, but they do a big job: draining icky fluid that causes childhood ear infections, pressure, and hearing problems in children.  The tubes need little maintenance — heck, they even come out by themselves in about a year. But it does mean that we need to be super careful about not getting water in his ears. Hence, we waited until Solly was 5 and a ½, and for the end of summer, so no more swimming for a while.

To conclude...

I am in absolute awe of the state of science and medical technology today. If for nothing else, I am grateful for the simple fact that when he came home that day from hospital, tired and hungry, I served Solly his favorite meal – pasta, of course – but this time with sauce. He not only commented on the good smell and the delicious taste, he actually finished a whole plate and asked for more! Now what else could a mother really ask for? What other miracle operations are perhaps in store for us down the road?

When Solly eventually came round, after the anaesthetic wore off, with Eli idly waiting by his side, the first thing Solly said to him was, “Abba, were you also on the plane?”

We are in this journey together and I am very pleased with Solly's impressive trajectory. Onwards and upwards, Solly!

·     [*Post Script: I haven’t blogged in 9 months, pathetically, I know, so I’m afraid I’ve been rather long-winded here. My next blogs, which will hopefully come sooner rather than later, will be half the size in length, I promise (if not shorter)! Thank you and well done if you've managed to read it through to the end!]