Mommy, I can't hear you!

It became quite apparent to us in the last month that Liz simply can't hear us. At first, I thought it was "selective" hearing loss.

For instance, I might say, "Liz, I need you to clean up your room." Her response: "Mommy, I can't hear you."

Sure, you can't hear me, I thought. Of course you can hear me.

Well, it became very obvious that in fact she can't hear me because no matter what I say, she can't hear me most of the time. A lot of times, she doesn't even respond to me simply because she can't even hear me talking.

It also became clear at school. Often times, we'd be walking into her school and a friend behind us, would say hello. She wouldn't even respond because she couldn't hear them. Her teacher even commented about this to me.

So, we took her to Children's Memorial in Chicago two weeks ago to see her Ear Nose Throat doctor and got her hearing tested. It was confirmed that she has moderate hearing loss on the left side and severe loss on the right side. They also said that with her hearing loss it would be a huge safety issue in the summer because her hearing is so bad she won't be able to hear vehicles behind her.

The doctor believes the culprit is a huge amount of fluid in her ears from an ear infection in January. So, we're going to do the surgery for tubes early tomorrow morning and are anticipating her hearing should return to normal again.

I'm a bit worried because she has a cough and we all know how strict the doctors are about not doing surgery on kids if they even have a sniffle. However, her pediatrician is convinced the cough is being caused by the fluid and the cough won't go away until the ear fluid goes away.

She's had tubes before - and all has gone well - so we're hopeful that the same will be true this time.

And most importantly, I'm looking forward to her hearing again so we don't have to practically shout around the house.