Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.  We are home and things went pretty well.  He was able to do most of the procedure by dilating her ear canal which was good and means she only has a small incision behind her ear from where he grafted some fascia - he also grafted some skin from within the ear canal.   She had started to develop a cholesteatoma, but luckily it had not started to erode or damage the middle ear bones.  He grafted her very large tympanic membrane perforation and cleaned out all of the cholesteatoma. 

The hard part will be the recovery.  We really need the graft to “take” so her hearing will improve.  Her recovery is 2-4-6; 2 weeks of no bending, lifting or straining; 4 weeks of no head upside down, bumps, rolling or contact sports; and 6 weeks of no water activity (careful bathing with vaseline cotton ball in the ear).   This will be interesting with my very busy and active girl!  He also examined her left ear under sedation and that perforation is also enlarging, so when we get through with this one and get a graft that takes; we get to start over on the other side.  About 6 weeks after each operation we will assess her earing and continue to examine the need for amplification (hearing aids).

Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers.   Here are some pics of Elly in recovery, her bunny helped her feel better!   She isn’t liking her packing and head gear much either…  

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