Happy Birthday Hearing Ben

philip glass: metamorphosis 2 (piano by branka parlic)

This day, 5th March is my birthday. I was born in 1969...sounds like a while ago when there is a one and a six and a nine involved. But honestly I have stopped paying attention. As long as my body holds up everything is OK and when it stops then I will go back to self-medication meditation. In the meantime there is so much to see and do. Today for example was a special day and not because of another year on Mother Earth rolling over me.
As mentioned Benyamin James is my 2 year old son who has been having some attention drawn to him by daycare and then health professionals due to a lack of hearing. Today we woke early (the whole family) and went to the local public hospital (a hive of a place with tunnels and doorways and people everywhere) for Ben to be given a general anesthetic and have his hearing probed, tested and examined. It took between 9am and 3 pm to get into and out of the hospital. A birthday I will not forget. To remove the future fluid he had surgery to put tubes in the eardrums. We will know on Monday the details of what was found with Ben's hearing but it seems that was the problem. This is the best birthday present I think I have ever been given. While we have been preparing ourselves for the possibility that Ben was/is hearing impaired (and in a way that was fine because so is he..so fine) it seems most likely now that he is not hearing impaired (he is still so fine). Today I remembered the important things.
UPDATE: It seems that my positive interpretation of the situation was not so accurate. Ben, we were told on Tuesday by the doctor is severely hearing impaired. While this is of course a difficult thing to deal with, it is also about who Ben is. We are getting a lot of support from the health care professionals and Ben himself is a happy and healthy little boy. The future looks filled with possibilities and we will be taking one step at a time.