We have been traveling the past ten days so therefore I haven't been working on the blog. I had a hope I would write a few more chapters for the book but we have been too busy having fun. During our travel we met a very nice family from the Central Coast of California and they have two sons, three and six years old. This has worked out quite well with us and
Ellie has been thrilled to have friends to play with. While we have all been spending time together we have shared stories and in the course of this I recalled a story I would like to share with you.
I moved to the Santa Cruz area about fifteen years ago. Prior to that I had spent three years working for a large multi-specialty group based in Yuba City and Davis. I became close friends with a general surgeon and his wife while I was there and they had a baby boy, "James".
James was cute, energetic, inquisitive but he had not spoken a single word and he was two
years old. By this time I was working in Santa Cruz but they were still in Yuba City. James and his family came to visit in Santa Cruz and we scheduled him for a set of ear tubes once
we confirmed that he had hearing loss from middle ear fluid.
At this point I had been over three years post residency and had done the procedure already literally hundreds of times. Despite that experience I had never experienced first hand the impact it could have on a family.
We all woke up early the morning of surgery and headed off to the hospital. We rolled off to the operating room and little James was great. Some children have separation anxiety when we take them from their parents to enter the room but James was quiet as looked up at me with his trusting eyes and let me take him to the room
James calmly inhaled the anesthetic gas and fell asleep. It was strange looking at my close friends son under anesthesia asleep. But I quickly shifted from caring "Uncle" to doctor and
I brought the microscope into focus and made a small incision in his eardrum on each side and removed a thick tenacious fluid from each ear and placed a tiny grommet tube.
James woke up easily and I took him to the recovery room and talked to his parents. They were staying at my home and I said that after work I would see them at my home later that day.
After a full day I arrived at home and saw James running around and being his normal self. His parents had plans to drive back to Yuba City and had packed and were ready to leave. We all exchanged hugs and goodbyes and as they were about to leave James looked at me and said "Bye" his very first word ever.
After they left and we all wiped a few happy tears away I recalled one of the physician graduate fellows who worked with me back in Detroit in my residency. We talked about how we did dozens of surgeries every day and 80% of them were placement of ear tubes. I asked him if he ever got bored and he looked at me somewhat incredulous and said never. That day I understood why.
