Isobel

This is Isobel.

She is almost 4 years old, she was born, and lives in Seoul,  Korea. Isobel loves to swim, collage, paint, read and jump on the trampoline. 

She also has severe Sensorineural hearing loss. This is when the inner ear nerves become damaged and do not properly transmit their signals to the brain.

She was not born deaf, this is something that has developed in the last 2 years. It was discovered when we realised her language skills weren't matching up to what they should be at her age. She can talk, but she doesn't talk in sentences and her pronunciation of words isn't quite right.

So, we find ourselves at the beginning of a journey to help Isobel to hear and develop her spoken language. To do this she will wear hearing aids for 2 months whilst all the testing is done for her to have surgery. She will be getting a cochlear implant on the left ear and will continue to wear a hearing aid on the right ear. The reason for this is that the implant produces a digital sound and the hearing aid provides a more natural sound. The idea being that Isobel will get the best of both worlds. The doctor was able to tell us that because Isobel was not born deaf, but this is a situation where her hearing has deteriorated the prognosis was for a higher success rate after the procedure.

The hearing aids and cochlear implant, are only half the story. In order for her to really talk properly, she needs auditory verbal therapy. This is very different to speech therapy. Without this the surgery is useless, she needs to learn to hear. The trouble is, all the therapists in Korea, speak Korean, as they should. However, we have been in contact with an Auditory Verbal consultant who has told me of a couple of organisations in Australia that offer the therapy via skype/video conferencing with the additional possibility of visits to their facilities, or therapists visiting us a couple of times a year. Australia is the leading country for this type of therapy and luckily in the same time zone as Korea!

So, task number 1, get impressions of her ears so the moulds for her hearing aids can be made...