loss

Sunday night I noticed something was not right with Abby's hearing. She was not repeating back the things I said during prayers that night, which she always does so well. Monday I talked to her teacher and asked her how Abby did during school that day, and she said that Abby was slow to respond and often had a glazed over look about her (which she does when she's tired, overstimulated, and I guess can't hear.) At home she has been emotional and non-conversational, and replaced well known words in her vocabulary with syllables like Kuh, Kae, Kah. Knowing that her CI does not make her hear perfectly overnight, we had a horrible feeling that she must have lost hearing in her right ear, her good ear, which she relies on so much. I called that day and set up a booth test with the audilogist for Thursday.

Tuesday and Wednesday were the same, and Wednesday afternoon we went to speech therapy. We always start each session with the LING 6 and Abby did okay with her HA and CI both on. But when we took off her CI and tried again, we got NO RESPONSE from her. Not even an acknowledgement that she heard anything. The speech therapist (whom I LOVE) and I realized at that point that she wasn't benefitting from her hearing aid at all anymore. Then she started telling me all the positive things about this situation. She already has a CI in place, so she can hear SOME things, she has had exposure to a lot of sound in her life, and she's been able to develop a good foundation for speech and hearing before she lost all her hearing. When she said that, I put my head in my hands and started sobbing. Abby and the therapist were both staring at me, and all I could do was cry, and mourn the loss of her hearing yet AGAIN.

Yesterday we went to the audiologist and did a hearing test in the sound booth. Abby is pretty good at these tests, so we feel that the results are somewhat accurate. We will do an ABR on Sept. 11th to confirm these results. But here they are:



The audi was able to bump up her hearing aid, and we also adjusted her CI MAp to she is able to hear better, but its obviously not the same as it used to be.

We also got to talk to the our ENT and if the ABR shows these same results, he would like to start talking about another cochlear implant. I'm not so sure I'm ready to go through that so quickly.