Today we spent our third (and hopefully final for a few weeks) Monday at the lovely Kosair Children's Hospital doing testing on sweet EK.
Last Monday was tubes and a little investigating to see how those ears looked on the inside. From an anatomy stand point, they look great. Everything that should be there, is there. And the things like the fluid and puss from 20 months of untreated ear infections that shouldn't be there, are now gone. Yes, puss. Gross, I know. The surgeon said there was a ton of it. And if I had to make an uneducated guess, I'd say that she never had a treated ear infection while living at the orphanage.
And before you jump the gun and start pointing fingers, no, her having multiple untreated ear infections didn't cause her to go deaf. I already asked. It didn't help her case, but certainly wasn't the cause.
She bounced back from the tubes pretty fast and was her normal chipper self after a 4 hour nap.
Today we repeated her sedated ABR (fancy word for hearing test while you are asleep) that was first done back in August. We knew we'd have to repeat it bc she had so much fluid (er, puss) that they weren't able to get good results from the first test.
Once again, she handled the not eating, the being poked and prodded, being stuck, the being wrapped up like a tiny burrito, the sedation all like a champ. It doesn't hurt that all the nurses and staff think she is the "most precious thing in the whole wide world" (said in a sing-songy-squeezing-your-cheeks kinda voice).
The hope today was that with the tubes and all that junk being gone from her ears, it might give her a boost in what she can hear with the hearing aids. I wasn't really holding my breath since I hadn't really seen any indication last week that she was hearing anything more than before. Please don't read that as a lack of faith. God could restore her hearing any 'ol time He chooses. Just like He can keep her deaf. I just hadn't noticed any huge changes.
And once the results were in, there wasn't really any substantial changes. Left ear stayed the same. They did get a response a little higher this time in the right ear, but it still falls in the severe to profound hearing loss range.
What is the next step?
Well, we go back next week to have her hearing aids reprogrammed to compensate for any changes after the tubes. And we return to the surgeon the first of November for a check on those tubes and to discuss our next options.
I think I know the fork in the road we are coming up on and while it excites me for her, it terrifies me as well. To make a choice to give her ears to hear and a voice to talk is a huge deal.
But a post on cochlear implants will be another topic for another day.
Possibly in the very near future.
Right now she's playing in the tub, biting the tail off a mermaid while attempting to wash her hair. Very unsuccessfully, I might add. As I dodge splashes and blog from my perch on the toilet. Seat down, of course.
Carry on, little one.
Your world as you know it may soon be completely different.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment