8/15/05

Tomorrow we see the doctor to get the results for Miles' CT scan. We will find out if he is a candidate for canalplasty or not. A canalplasty would open up his ear canal to help him hear. I totally do not have my hopes up for it. From what I read, very few kids with hemifacial microsomia are candidates. Usually their middle ear bones are fused and/or not developed properly, so opening it up would be futile, since they wouldn't hear properly any way.
If it turns out, on a fluke, that he is a candidate, I really don't know what the heck we're going to do. We'll have some hard decisions in front of us. Do we even have the canalplasty? It's fairly dangerous and has limited results. I'd hate for him to go through a risky, complex operation and then not have it work anyway.
Most doctors recommend that when the kid only has unilateral microtia, you don't do a canalplasty anyway. They say the one ear should be enough and the canalplasty is too risky. But then there are adults on my microtia board, who say that if you can do it, you should. They feel that hearing out of two ears is the only way to go, if it's at all possible. Is it fair for me to decide whether or not he can hear out of two ears?
And if we decide we do want to pursue a canalplasty, then we have to postpone the construction operation in October. Currently no canalplasty doctor will do one after a medpor implant (although they'd do it before a rib graft). So you have to do it before. That worries me too. I have a feeling that his ear would look much worse with an ear canal in it and no "proper" ear. It would be temporary, but I can only imagine that it would not look good at all.
God, I hate making life altering decisions like this for someone else. When you sign up for parenting, you don't like to think about this.
For information on microtia, see http://www.pde.com/~kazemir/. For information on the medpor implant/construction surgery and the Dr. who will do it, see http://hopeforkids.com/body_microtia.html. I don't have a good link on canalplasties, but the Kazemir site should cover it.