Close but no cigar

Everything was in place. Brady had a new sleepover backpack to take to the Grandparents house, Cullen had new button front pjs, all the various docs knew what we expected them to do on Thursday, but alas, it is not to be. After a good discussion with Cullen's pediatrician this afternoon Shay and I canceled his surgery tomorrow.

Today he was running temperatures of 103 - 103.5 and smiling the entire time. Tough kid. It seems that although we were blessed with essentially 8 months free of ear infections, Cullen finally got an ear infection that just won't go away. We have tried all sorts of antibiotics and are trying new ones again starting tonight. None of these drugs have even made an impact on the runaway infection in his ears. We are now treating it as possibly a staph infection and/or mean ear infection. His tests came back negative for swine flu, but we learned that the tests are only 50% accurate at this age. Nice. Blood tests changed minimally so we are trying anything at this point to fix his ears. The fun part is the true cure is Ear Tubes. However he can't get tubes until his fever goes down. And his fever won't go down until his ears are drained...which is done when his tubes are put in. And now we have come full circle. :-) You would think that we would be anxious to get his lip fixed, but really we aren't. We love his face just the way it is. We want his tubes so he can hear properly. Funny how your priorities shift!

After pestering several doctors for ideas, we finally found a Plan B. Cullen will get ear tubes in a separate operation ASAP. We will then reschedule with Plastics for a later date. The bummer is that Plastics is currently scheduling for November, they simply do not have a shortage of patients. Who knew there were so many kids with Clefts?? Shay and I will meet with the Plastic surgeon on Monday to discuss Cullen's revised treatment plan/timeline given this change.

On a positive note, Cullen started pulling up today. First it was the wood table with the really sharp corner. Then it was trying to pull up on the chair cover ties in the kitchen. All the while his temp was hovering around 102. This evening he pulled up on me and the infamous duckie bath tub. I suspect cruising and walking are in our near future! Tomorrow I will teach him to pull up on the couches...at least they are soft.