Thursday, March 05, 2009

Zachary and Leah Updates

Today Zachary and Leah went to the doctor for their standard check-ups. Leah is 29 3/4 inches tall and weighs 20 lbs, she is 30% and 22% respectively. Zachary on the other hand is in the 50% for height and weight, which are 34 lbs and 39 1/4 inches. Oh, and they got 7 shots between them, 3 for Leah and 4 for Zachary.

Okay, now to the interesting part of our day. Both Leah and Zachary were being checked out in the same room by the same doctor. Zachary was checked out first, the doctor did the normal ears, nose, throat, groin area, etc. She looked in his left ear, right ear, and found something white in there. She thought maybe it was a bit of ear wax as she was looking, and then looked more closely with the magnifying glass and said it looked like a shell. Anyhow, she finished with Zachary and Leah's checkup before trying to fish it out.

A second doctor came in to try to help pry out the shell. No luck. Zachary was struggling too much and the shell was too deep. So she called an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor to set up an appointment. We went to the ENT several hours later, and sure enough, when the nurse looked in his ear she thought it was a shell, tiny and pearly white. She even had me look at it. Yup, a white shell in his ear.

We moved to another room where the kids got to watch Sponge Bob while we waited. The doctor came in and looked in the ear and agreed it was a shell. Now the fun part, the assistant came in and gave Zachary Valium. He can't swallow pills so she was going to dissolve it in water, but apparently it tastes pretty disgusting, so I suggested juice. She found some bright orange V8 splash, yum! It took him two Dixie cups full of juice to get that Valium down. 15 minutes later he was good and loopy and the doctor came in with two assistants to hold him down and take out the shell that has probably been there since Pawley's last June.

The doctor took long tweezers and put them in Zach's ear and pulled; meanwhile Zachary was struggling and turning beet red. Suddenly he took out a shell like a magician pulling a coin from Zach's ear. Not a piece, but a whole shell. The assistant helped us get Zachary into the car for the ride home. He was so drugged up he couldn't walk straight and he was a little chatter box on the ride home.




As you can see, the shell is on the right of the penny.