Hellobee Boards

I had tubes when I was about 2.5. My chronic ear infections pretty much stopped immediately. But now a days I don't have great hearing and every time a new doctor looks in my ears they point out to me that I have scar tissue in there (which is probably what makes my hearing not great). But then again I'm sure they've made some serious advancements in the surgery procedure since 25 years ago!

My son had tubes put in his ears about 3 months ago when he was 8 months old due to recurring ear infections that were growing progressively resistant to antibiotics as well as were frequent from the time he was 4 months old. I really didn't like the idea of tubes but my pediatrician broached the topic at 7 months when we brought him in for yet another ear infection. He referred us to a pediatric ENT and said he just wanted to get another opinion and that many time the ENT says do nothing, it will be fine. So we went and once my son had a hearing test and we realized that he only had 40% of his hearing currently available to him due to the amount of fluid that stayed in his ears, we knew the likelihood of what the ENT was about to say.
Sure enough, the pediatric ENT recommended tubes. We decided to go ahead and do it and I'm so glad we did. The procedure was at 7:30am and we were back home again by 9am. No adverse reaction to the anesthesia, no restrictions on submersing in water (swimming and baths), etc. Within hours we could see a difference in my son's ability to balance - he was no longer so wiggly and swaying. Since then he's had a few colds and each time, a little discharge is seen from his ears, proving that the tubes are doing what they are supposed to and no ear infection resulted. Essentially puncturing my son's ear drum didn't make any logical sense to me since a drum doesn't work with a hole in the middle so it seems counter intuitive that putting a tube in my son's eardrum would actually help him hear but lo and behold, the miracles of medicine.