Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Olivia has her hearing aids!

Monday, Olivia was fitted for her hearing aids. We met with Dr. Buchman the neuro-otolaryngologist as well as her audiologist, Pat Roush. Her fitting went great.. I was able to get her hearing aids in on the first try and Josh did equally as well when he tried. When we turned them on she just smiled so big and laughed so hard! We both teared up just watching her coo, grin, smile and laugh. It was priceless to see her reaction. After her fitting we met Dr. Buchman and were very pleased with him as well. We will have a MRI done at 6 months to check out her inner ear structure. She will have to be sedated for the MRI and they will also do a EKG to check out her heart during the same appointment. He wants us to have her vision checked after 6 months of age because sometimes hearing and vision problems occur together. We also sent off a release to have her heel stick blood spot from birth analyzed for the most common genetic form of hearing loss, Connexin 26 as well as CMV (cytomeglavirus). I am so hoping and praying that it is not CMV because that can cause a wide spread of developmental problems; evidently pregnant women can be exposed to CMV without ever knowing. The blood test could take months to get back so I am trying not to be anxious. Dr. Buchman did not recommend genetic testing because he said that the companies that do the testing are not very good at it right now and often they come back with mixed results. We did ask about progression of the loss and basically if the cause of her hearing impairment is CMV or enlarged vestibular aqueducts (which we could find out during MRI) then the odds of the loss progressing is much higher. So it sounds like we will be making frequent trips to Chapel Hill this first year. Besides the testing Dr. Buchman recommended, she will start behavioral testing in the sound booth to try to plot out her audiogram at 7 months and every 6 weeks thereafter until they can get an accurate audiogram that matches the ABR. We will have frequent ear molds made as well.. hopefully we can find somewhere local to make the ear molds so we can limit some driving. 

How am I doing? Truthfully most of the time I am okay..I can talk about it pretty freely and I wasn't even upset when I saw people talking about her hearing aids when we went to the mall. I do hope that people will look at her sweet little face before they look at the hearing aids but I know it's also very unusual to see a tiny baby with hearing aids. I want her to be okay. I feel like I can handle her hearing loss but I am hoping and praying that EVERYTHING else is okay. In my field because I have worked with so many children with disabilities I analyze everything and that is driving me crazy. However nothing will change the love I have for my sweet, sweet baby girl!



2 comments:

  1. All I can see when I look at these pictures is that gorgeous dimple in her sweet cheek! She is an absolute dollface:)

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  2. Thanks Misty!! Hopefully we will see you guys soon :)

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