Little Ear

Written on August 24, 2011.  I would love to go on and on about what an awesome kid Ben has always been and still is - but that's not the purpose of this blog.  When I searched for an old photo of his little ear, it took me down memory lane smiling a lot about what an affectionate and cute kid he's always been.  It's clear that Ben would have been perfectly fine keeping his little ear.  It was very typical grade III microtia with no ear canal.

Most people, even those who had known us for years, were not aware of it.  His speech developed well.  He is still not as verbal as his brothers (which is not necessarily a negative thing), and we're not sure if it's because that's his personality, he's the middle child and can hardly get a work in edge-wise or if there's some connection with his microtia.  It'll be interesting to observe him in the coming years after his surgery.  Whatever the case, I think that our awareness of the possible speech development and hearing issues with his microtia atresia and support from the California Early Start Program were important for helping his speech develop and progress well.

The pictures here are from August 2006 when Ben was 10 months old.  It is to provide a glimpse of what Ben's little ear looked like.  It was very cute - quite a classic example of grade III microtia.  When I used to look at pictures of surgery results, I used to always think that the best ones were cases in which the person started out with a pretty good amount of ear lobe and an ear canal - so they didn't seem like comparable situations to ours.

I've been quite impressed so far by what the ear can look like.  It'll be interesting to see how the skin changes, if at all.  We saw Francesca at Dr. Lewin's office yesterday, and she said that the ear will get more definition.