DS has fluid in the ear, delays suddenly make sense

[malfranco]

Hi everyone DS just has a hearing test showed fliid in the left ear. Having looked into this would explain a lot poor balance, not walking or talking general development delay over two now as well. Has anyone else had this and what did they get done. He cries a lot and also rubs his ears as well does a lot of hand and feet wiggling. Bearing in mind his history suprised they said come back in three months not happy with that as he is far behind now. Surely with Logan being I'll for over 18 months now this should have been picked up and dealt with a long time ago docs are incompetant.

It's difficult to tell if a child has glue ear (fluid in middle ear) until it's specifically looked for unless there are obvious symptoms (delays in speech & language etc). When the glue ear turns into an infection it's usually obvious (pain, temperature) but there are also "silent" ear infections too with no symptoms.
My dd2 had severe glue ear but never showed any discomfort or pain whatsoever. She grew out of it by age 5. Dd1 age 6 is still prone to mild glue ear, she always feels it quite badly. Neither were treated for glue ear though dd2 wears hearing aids for sensorineural deafness (cause unknown) and dd1 gets antibiotics when ear gets infected.

Grommets are used to drain glue ear but this is an invasive treatment (anaesthetic), doesn't always work, can lead to infections. Therefore, in my opinion, it is sometimes a better option to see if a child will outgrow it (eustachian tubes better draining when neck grows). Hearing aids can be an option as they bypass the hearing loss caused by glue ear.
It is possible that glue ear may contribute to Logan's difficulties, though may not necessarily be the cause. The glue ear might not have been picked up before because it may have only just started.
Sorry, being devils advocate here. However I agree that it's not fair to wait 3 months. If I were you I'd keep taking him to the gp for check-ups every week so they could monitor his ear (easy for them to detect redness etc as a sign of infection and check health of eardrum). This is important as ear infections must be treated - glue is normal to some extent, infection is not.

The waiting lists can be horrendous in some places. It's a real bugbear for me. It took 4 months for my child just to get from GP to audiology for a hearing test.
I know waiting lists are to be expected, but I don't see why it has just taken 4 WEEKS for a GP to send a referal to a hospital 1 mile up the road. So that's 1 month gone already, and a 3 month waiting list to follow (have recently moved so it's back to getting dcs in the system and chasing "missing" files...grrrr).
I've learnt now that you must ALWAYS chase up referals yourself. Ringing back and forth chasing up referals can help kick a$$.