The baby we were told would never know who we were, and would never roll over or sit up, became a delightfully happy child who loved to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with his big sister.
Here he is only a year after he regained his hearing. He had just been learning to recognize several words when he was six months old, when he developed a fever and diarrhea and stopped eating. Months of force feeding and Dr visits left him at half his starting weight and deaf. When mom broke down and cried to the Dr that he had to so something or Lance would die, the Dr. Said, "but wouldn't that be best for your family?" Mom's emphatic reaction had him admitting that Lance had picked up Giardia and a dose of antibiotics would cure him. So one shot and he began to recover but was still deaf until surgery to drain fluid and insert tubes when he was five. That was routine surgery soon after, but he was one of the first and it required actually cutting his ear off, general anesthesia, surgery under a microscope and reattaching the ear. Afterward the awakening with a new sense in a recovery bed across the wall from a flushing toilet, and the sound of his own screams and the explosive noise of mom patting his back and murmuring, "it's ok" by his ear all overwhelmed and terrified him and it was years before he could handle the noise of a concert or indoor sporting event.
