Tubes....Take 3!

This morning Zoya has her third set of ear tubes placed. She's never had issues with infection, but she has very tiny canals (typical of kids with DS) and when we brought her home from Ukraine her ears were so entirely filled with fluid that her hearing was 40% blocked in at least one ear. Her first set of tubes lasted almost a year which is great! With the 2nd set, one of the tubes was out in under 4 months if I remember correctly, and the other one just recently fell out as well. The ENT gave us a choice of "wait and see" or just place another set of tubes before winter. Already having speech delays related to Down Syndrome, we decided we wanted to be proactive and just have another set of tubes placed as a preventative measure to make sure fluid isn't accumulating and that her hearing continues to be crisp and clear.

Here is Zoya right before her procedure experiencing "Happy Juice." 

The third time around the doctor decided to do t-tubes instead of regular tubes because they are longer-lasting (hopefully). They could last a couple of years (hopefully). The good news is that when he put the tubes in today he said both ears showed no signs of fluid, which is encouraging, because one of the tubes has been out for almost 4 months! So I'm hoping this will be her last set of tubes!

Zoya does NOT come out of anesthesia well AT ALL. You all remember that 200 pound drunk college kid acting really belligerent going from hysterical crying one minute to just fine the next minute, falling all over the place, trying to walk although you tell them not to, fighting with the strength of 3 grown men, requesting things one minute and refusing them the next, slurred speech....yada yada yada....yah, well that is Zoya for several hours after anesthesia :( She cries inconsolably and then stops, and then cries, then stops....over and over....the length of time in between crying episodes slowly gets longer and longer. Her last crying episode was at about 5:00 pm (her surgery was at 7:30 am). Even though I'm only posting a few hapy pictures, believe me when I say it was a rough day. I'm just not one to snap a picture of my crying baby LOL!

Shawn had to run to work as soon as we got home, but Uncle Mike stuck around for a bit and helped wrangle Zoya. His training as a fire fighter lugging around dead weight came in handy! It was quite entertaining to watch him jump to his feet with a "woah woah woah" every single time Zoya decided to try and walk against my best advice!

Here is Mike with Zoya in a happy moment! 

And here is Miss Mila supervising Zoya's bath. Mila was given strict instructions not to let Zoya get any water in her ears and I was finally able to take a nap since Mila was in charge! (totally kidding, I'd never leave her alone in the tub...or really anywhere for that matter HAHA). 

Zoya is snuggled in bed dreaming right now! Her right ear has some bloody drainage which they say can be normal, but a little alarming to see since she never had that before with her other surgeries :( She is cleared to go back to school tomorrow as long as she passes the mama test in the morning :)