Written by Kevin Cawthern a few days ago:
Dear Richard:
Thanks for this incredibly helpful blog! My 9 year-old son (adopted from Russia) has two perforated eardrums, and is undergoing surgery with the very same Dr. Meiteles tomorrow morning (right ear) at 6 am.
I suspect he got the perforations from infections at the orphanage, and has been getting recurrent infections (about 6-7 per year) since he has been in the US (roughly 3.5 years). As a result, he really needs this to protect him from further hearing loss, and your roadmap to recovery is very helpful for his mom and me.
My concerns are for preparing a little boy for the surgery and recovery, and eliciting his cooperation in keeping mobility to a minimum. In addition, he loves to go swimming, and being summer, this will be hard to live without. So I envision difficulty for us in keeping him calm and sneeze-free. We have him daily on Claritin, but colds may be difficult to avoid.
We have given him little info until now, since most of it is scary and he would be terrified mulling over it, and might even have nightmares abot it. We are planning to give him an upbeat but matter of fact discussion about what to expect tomorrow, but we want him to remain as positive as possible. We will incorporate your observations of the healing process and mileposts to success to tell him what he should expect.
If you have any wisdom for us to share with a small boy about to undertake this big step, I would be happy to hear it. But at any rate, your posts have been helpful to us, and they give us hope our outcome with Dr. Meiteles will be as good as yours.
I wish you continued good fortune and success at Tufts, and thank you for this blog.
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