Paige's 1st Pediatric Audiology Appointment

Paige's 1st ped. audi appt was today for her ABR test on her right (little) ear and a regular hearing screen on her left as that ear had failed the hospital hearing test. It went great! Phil couldn't get off work on such short notice without having to put it in as FMLA and since it would be the first day off it would have been a pain to get the hours paid because he used up all of one type of paid leave while he was off on parental leave so Dad drove us down there in the rolling tomato and mom came along. He did a great job of finding Emmanuel and decided that he would never want to commute through traffic. Angi and Chip were nice enough to keep Kyra for the day since it said in the instructions for the test to leave other children at home! I suppose we could have let her run around the hospital halls and lobby with Papa but I don't think he would have had enough energy after that long of chasing her to drive back home!!! (I know I wouldn't if I didn't have a carrier or a stroller with to contain her!)

Paige slept through the whole test like they wanted (2 1/2 hours!!!) and her pediatric audiologist is a WONDERFUL lady who is really nice and knows her stuff. Paige's left ear (the big ear) is PERFECT. She tested everything that could be tested on that side and it is fine. On the right side, she was able to confirm that there is a cochlea (sp?) and that it seems to be totally complete and can pick up high and low tones. She will go for more testing now with an ENT to have a CT scan and see if the bones, eardrum and ear canal are there and if they're present how much reconstruction would be necessary if possible for the ear to function normally eventually. The Audiologist is getting her signed up for Early Intervention right away and it sounds like she'll probably have a bone conducting hearing aid relatively soon that will stimulate all the nerves on that side to help her brain develop normally and so that if they are eventually able to reconstruct that ear that the nerves will be in place and so she can develop the ability to tell where sounds are coming from.