Jayse had had an ear infection since March. We had gone though all kinds of drops. The doctor had scrapped out infection but nothing seemed to be fixing it. Finally in June the doctor thought maybe Jayse’s cholesteatoma was back, which is what he had his first ear surgery for back here and that’s what was causing the infection.

He sent us to get a CT scan to see if the cholesteatoma was in fact back. A week later we got the results and in fact it was back. It’s what had been causing the infection and the only way to get ride of it was to have another surgery.

It wasn’t a surgery his Dr. thought he needed right away. Although we’d still have to deal with his infection as we had been with drops to keep it at bay until surgery. We were torn between doing it before school with the possibility of him missing the whole football season or doing it after football and him missing some school and all of hunting season.

In the end we thought it would be best to just get it out of the way and hope he could play a few weeks of football. The surgery was scheduled for Aug. 16th. We were already a couple weeks into football. He’s practiced for 2 weeks but was going to miss Jamboree which was the next day.

The day of his surgery Greg and I took the day off and all went to the hospital with him, including Jaelee. This was Jayse’s 7th surgery and it feels like a lot of the processes are routine to us now. Check in, go to surgery waiting, go to pre-surgery, get weighed in change and wait. We had the exact same nurse for this ear surgery as we did the last time he had surgery on his ear.

Check out these pictures of him getting his height measured, the first one is from his ear surgery in 2015 and the second one was his latest surgery. Same nurse, same wall, really different height.

It also seems that each time we happen to find shark shows on the TV to watch while we wait. This time was the same we watched a show on the largest shark caught on camera, it was pretty cool.

Jayse’s surgeon came in and talked to us briefly about the surgery but again because we’ve been through pretty much this exact same surgery before we knew mostly what to expect. He marked his ear and headed out to get ready.

They had to put in IV in Jayse like his last surgery for the anesthesia, he did SO good with this. They got it in one try and he didn’t even flinch.

Once everything was ready they came in and rolled him away.

While we waited we went and had lunch at one of Greg’s favorites, Chic fil a. Then we went back to the hospital and hung out in surgery waiting. I blogged, Jaelee and Greg watched on their phones.

When they came to tell us the doctor was finishing up it had been about 3 1/2 hours. The surgery was scheduled for 1 1/2 the doctor told us it would take about 2 unless the cholesteatoma was worse than he thought. Being it had been so long we figured it was on the worse end.

Sure enough. The doctor came to talk to us and he said once he got in there and could see behind the ear drum the cholesteatoma was really bad and had started to erode some bones and Jayse’s ear drum. Jayse’s ear drum was so compromised he said parts of it were paper thin and he ended up taking half of it out, the rest of the bones in his ear and he covered over another part so it wouldn’t get infected. If Jayse hadn’t already lost his hearing with the surgery in 2015 he would of lost it with this one.

When Jayse was in recovery we went back there to be with him. This was one of the longer surgeries and he had been under for quit a while. Because of that he had a hard time waking up. We managed to get him up and drinking eating enough though to get checked out.

We had a pretty hard recovery with this one. Greg slept with him that night. I had jamboree in the morning and needed some sleep. We typically wake him up every 4 hours for pain medication. Greg was doing that but Jayse was also throwing up a bunch. He had taken a bath some time in the middle of the night and they had very little sleep. He continued to throw up the whole day.

That night I slept with him and it was then I saw a correlation between the pain medication and him throwing up. I recalled this happening before and we stopped giving it to him. We just rotated between tylenol and ibprofen. That did the trick and he stopped throwing up. He was also dizzier this time and had a harder time walking. Greg had to help him to and in the bathroom.

By Monday Greg and I had to go back to work. We didn’t want Jayse home with just Jaelee so my brother and his girlfriend Teaven came over to stay with them. By Tuesday though he was feeling much better.

Thursday though he woke up in the middle of the night and said he had blood everywhere. He found the blood was coming from the incision on the back of his ear. He just stuck some toilet paper on it and went back to bed. When Greg went to wake him up he saw Jayse with blood all over. He woke him up to find out what happened. When I went up there to see he had blood all down the back of his ear and all over his neck. It didn’t look good.

Greg put a bandage on his ear and I called the doctor. They couldn’t get us in right away but said he should be ok. We went to the doctor a few days later, they basically told us to just keep it bandaged and it should heal itself. Poor Jayse had to wear a bandage on the back of his ear and a cotton ball in his ear for weeks. The first few days of school and when we went to OR.

Now that it’s been almost a month he’s pretty much back to normal. However he just had an appointment for them to look at his ear and they said he still can’t run, sweat or do anything to impact the ear and will miss the whole football season. Just when we get the kids on the same schedule after years of running around he’s not playing. Oh well he has many more years of football. I’m just glad he’s healthy and healing.

Whew that was a lot, sorry just like to document all this if not for your reading pleasure for our family to remember. Now onto the pictures.

Jaelee took a few photos –

Jayse’s team made a huge card for him, gave him a bag of candy and signed a football. They have been AMAZING through all of this. His coach text me several times during the day of his surgery and they have been so welcoming and awesome at games.