Ear operation - anyone with experience of this?

[Belle]

My son (5) has had two grommett operations, at 16 months and 2 yrs old. Both times the grommetts made a huge improvement to his health & quality of life (had chronic ear infections/glue ear) and we don't regret getting the operations. Both times, the grommetts fell out naturally after some time had passed (as is expected). However, we discovered about a year ago at a routine audiology follow up appt that he had lost some hearing in one ear. Subsequent appointments with our consultant have revealed that one hole left by the grommett has not closed back up properly and his hearing is down to 25% in the affected ear. This requires a relatively simple op to repair. We have no qualms about this and trust the surgeon completely. However I don't know much about this whole circumstance - has anyone heard of this or been through similar? Particularly wondering what the practical implications of this hearing loss are, it's so hard to tell what is behavioural and what is physical when it comes to listening at this age...

any advice/insight very much appreciated.

NB this isn't meant as to cast any negative light on the grommetts process, which we thought made a massive difference and we'd definitely do them again. Just in case anyone reading this is considering it!

[Dodie]

Hi Belle... I don't have experience from the child's perspective but from my own, as an adult. I initially thought it may not be that relevant for you but maybe not many people have gone through this (as no-one's replying at the moment) so thought I'd bump it for you! I lost a lot of my hearing through glue ear in my pregnancy three years ago. They put in a gromet in one ear (which immediately returned my hearing, which was actually for the first day very confusing as I had become so used to not hearing and kept getting startled by noises on my "bad ear" side!) after 9 months and mine did stay in and they removed it after about 9months and the hole has closed up. I do still constantly lose my hearing when I get colds though (somethign I never had before pregnancy). I have also permanently lost about 25 per cent of my hearing in both ears but apparently this is most likely because I am an adult and you don't heal in the same way as children do (I believe permanent loss is rare in children). This 25% permanent loss only affects me when I'm in busy places e.g. in a pub and finding it difficult to hear people talking to me. For future reference, (when the problems have cleared up and if you're thinking more about prevention in the future), my GP has recently recommended otovent to me (look it up on amazon) to try to keep my ears clear when I have a cold. I've not used it yet but it seems to have some great reviews.

To give you an insight into how the hearing loss affected me as an adult, at one point, I was down to 25% hearing in one ear and about 75% in the other. I found it very difficult to hear when in noisy places e.g. stay and play groups, restaurants with music playing and actually tended to avoid these situations because i found it very confusing to work out where sounds were coming from (made me very nervous crossing roads with my new born twins). In conversations with people, I was OK if my "good ear" was next to them and they didn't look away as they were talking to me and external noise was limited e.g. radio on made things very difficult (still find this difficult even with only 25% loss). I am a light sleeper but if I was sleeping on the "good ear" side, I would rarely hear anything that would wake me (again made me very anxious as a new mum).

One other point I just thought of. After I had the gromet put in, I had conflicting information given to me by different doctors in the hospital about how to protect my ear when washing hair/showering. Some said that I didn't need to do anything other than not deliberately put my ear up to the shower and let water get in. Others said I should be protecting it and be very careful about this. I did get some infections as a result of water getting in my ear and my GP advised me to wear an ear plug when washing hair and I did this and never had any more infections afterwards.

I hope this is of some help. I can tell you that my brother was almost completely deaf until he was 5 when the problem just "righted itself" without gromits (my mother doesn't even remember now what happened). He was talking lots but only my mother and myself could understand him until that point (not even dad) and then as soon as his hearing came right, his speech came on and he developed completely normally and has never had hearing problems since. Children do seem to be able to just get over things so quickly! Not entirely sure what info you are hoping for but please do ask if there is something more specific that my own experience might help with.

Hope it all gets sorted soon.

[Dodie]

Sorry, just remembered tinnitus also. This always comes in when I lose my hearing with a cold but is not there when it returns to "normal" again (with only the 25% loss). Mine takes the form of a high pitched buzz/squeal that is constant and does not change. It is only distracting when it is quiet around me and my brain begins to concentrate on it. When my hearing loss was bad though, at 75% it was really quite distracting at all times and actually very annoying, particularly when trying to go to sleep and I would hear a very loud pulse in my ear (like I could hear blood rushing through my head in pulses). I also remember a bizarre experience which lasted for a few weeks where I could hear a specific piece of music being played and even though I knew it was my brain "making it up" to compensate for the hearing loss, it was as "real" sounding to me as if there was a stereo in the room.

I don't know whether kids get tinnitus but it may be worth bearing in mind that he could be experiencing it.

[Belle]

Thank you so much Dodie, very helpful to hear of your experience, and I'm glad things improved for you with the grommets (which I never spell correctly!). I can't imagine how challenging this was for you when dealing with newborn twins! Your insight on how the hearing loss manifested itself is very very helpful. We have been wondering whether this might be a factor at school (teachers have picked him up on concentration issues) - obviously realise a 5 yr old boy is not necessarily the best listener even with perfect hearing! I am thinking a busy classroom may well cause issues. and also that i need to be better at making sure I'm on his good side/in front of him when I'm talking to him.

We got conflicting advice re water in ears too. As it happens, we rarely swim (try to use ear plugs when we do though) and he hates having his hair washed so we do it in the least invasive way possible (sometimes he'll only allow me to basically do it using a flannel...). On the rare occasions that water has got in, he's really reacted to it though.

thanks again - really appreciate you posting.

[DenmotherSmith]

Hi Belle

My six year old son had a very large hole in his ear drum (not due to grommets but glue ear and repeat infections) which had resulted in around 25% hearing loss. He had the surgery to repair it, which took around 2.5 hours. He had the surgery in May and by the end of August his hearing was back to 100%. Since then he has had no further ear problems.

post op there was no swimming (or showering without sufficient protection of the ear) till we got the all clear in August. That was three year ago and he has had no problem, ear infections etc. since. He can certainly hear very well , when he wants to.......)

[Grotty]

I'm following this thread with interest as my 2 year old daughter has had recurrent ear infections since October, has had burst eardrums 5 times, and again this morning has awoken with pus streaming out of her ears. Initially she definitely had some hearing difficulty, but currently seems ok. We have been referred to ENT and are now awaiting an appointment to discuss grommets...

[Belle]

Grotty, feel free to PM if you want to discuss the grommet experience/process that led us to it - your daughter sounds like she's having a similar experience to my son. at 15 mths and even at 2 it was quite hard to tell if his hearing was impaired so for us it was more about the infections, which were really hard to treat.

[espelli]

I had glue ear in both ears followed by burst eardrums last year and really empathise with your son at school Belle. I'm a teacher and the classroom (Year 1) was almost unbearable at times. I couldn't tell where sounds were coming from and often could see that someone right in front of me was talking to me but I could only only hear the general noise in the room. It was very frustrating. I don't know how much hearing I lost at the time but it felt significant in the difference it made to normal life. I work in a Victorian building and the stairs were the worst in terms of noise affecting me. The sound of feet and voices bouncing around left me feeling jangled for a while afterwards so I can understand how children struggle to concentrate in lessons and sometimes have a dip in their behaviour. We have made a rule for silence on the stairs at my school now and it has made a massive difference to the children - not just the ones we knew had hearing issues/glue ear.

[Belle]

Very interesting - thank you - also explains why he was so keen to move to packed lunches as he said the school dinners were too noisy & gave him a headache (a bigger group of kids). I couldn't understand it at the time as he is not exactly quiet himself!

I hope your ears/hearing have now recovered - can imagine how difficult it would be working in that environment.