I so often write about the emotionally difficult and exhausting things that happen in my daily life, I thought it would be nice to post a more happy event.
My favorite part of residency is my continuity clinic. The patient's I see here are MY patients. I am the Dr. They identify me as their Dr. and though I am supervised, within reason, I treat the patients as I wish.
A couple of months ago I saw a new patient, a 5 year with family concern for autistic like behaviors. This child was completely out of control. He could sit still, he didn't listen, he always played by himself and would have temper tantrums. He did talk but he was very difficult to understand and could not make any s or f sounds. He was tremendously uncooperative with the exam. To complicate things, he also had a hoarse quality to his voice that had persisted for a year. I was very concerned about his development and knew he needed some more evaluation so I made a bunch of referals.....to ENT, speech, hearing eval, behavior and development.
Today I got the results of his hearing evaluation. He has profound hearing loss in both ears. Unusual that this was not caught sooner.....but easy to miss because he was such a difficult child to examine. He is getting fitted for hearing aids and I have high hopes that this will turn this kiddo's life around. Of course I also gave a big sigh of relief because I didn't miss it...and let's face it, he's 5 years old it's been missed multiple times before.
No comments:
Post a Comment