Between a rock...

Have you ever been in one of those situations where one person tells you one thing and another person tells you another? Well, that is where we are. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In my previous post, I touched upon the frustrations Isobel has been experiencing, due to the mouth covering and the soft sounds she struggles to hear. Our sessions have improved greatly as I have taken a more relaxed approach to them and have built them around some kind of art and craft activity. Her response to these sessions now has been vastly improved and once again she is doing a great job.

A language sample done last week puts her Mean Language Utterance (MLU) at 2.08 words. That is, in free expressive speech the average length of phrase Isobel uses is 2.08. This is on par for a 2 year old, which when you think Isobel has a hearing age of around 4 months is pretty good.

Isobel's school report card came out today and it was... brilliant! There were of course areas for improvement and her language development section was a work in progress, but, compared to her first report card, this looks like it was written for a different child. So happy!

Anyway, I digress. The rock and the hard place situation has occurred because of differing opinions from our ENT and our AV therapist and consultant Audiologist. 

In a nutshell we find ourselves at a crossroad - that is, do we go ahead with Cochlear Implantation?

We have had so many appointments, meetings and discussions in the last two weeks, we feel overwhelmed with information and making a decision couldn't be harder.

We are making strides forward though. Next week Isobel is getting her hearing aids programmed adjusted. It seems we are able to get some more gain on them, an additional 10db in the low frequency range. Hopefully this will help her to hear more of those softer, sounds and she can start to finely tune her speech. Hey we can hope...

So, we're going to see how that helps, but the ENT really does feel that the best course of action would be a cochlear implant on the right side an a hearing aid on the left. Yep, the absolute original idea that we though we might not have to do...

But, because her hearing loss is not a usual hearing loss - (good high frequency hearing and poor low frequency) she is not the typical cochlear implant case, however, with newer technology, cochlear implants can now also help with hearing loss cases just like Isobel.

But the big thing is of course, is that it is surgery. If the hearing aids give her enough to hear all the sounds so she can speak should we do it?

Decisions...