Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Emily's latest Cochlear Implant Appt.

Emily's Audiologist grabbed us for a last-minute Cochlear Implant check-up at Trey's school yesterday. We had a 2 hour late start so it meant that we wouldn't have to miss school for an appointment we had scheduled later in the week. Anyhow- her basic testing shows that she is hearing between 10-15 db on each implanted ear, and both ears are almost exactly in line with each other (which is GREAT!). It is what they look for. She also has shown huge improvement in her ability to detect words, with no visual clues. Still not perfect, but a lot better. Her closed set word discrimination was o.k. When the words were all similar (bean, queen, etc), she is only at 48%, so there's still lots of work to be done, but all in all, a pretty good visit. No new map needed.

Our Audiologist did ask me if Em's Speech Therapist is having her wear her new implant only for speech. Um...No???? I hadn't even thought to ask her Speech Therapist to make that happen. This is why I'm going to be pushing for the school district to pay a consulting fee to the private school Emily used to go to (and Trey currently attends), to work on her IEP, and speech goals. My children are the only younger ones in the district that are Oral deaf/HOH kids. They have children who have used ASL Interpreters, etc. and they are willing to do that for us, but our needs are different and not the 'norm' for the school district. We're having to be creative in what we ask for, and what services are really important to the future success of the kids.

Delaney is a whole different issue, as she will be attending Middle School next year. The logistics of her FM system and how we transfer equipment is something I need to start thinking about. For those out there who have been there (or ARE there- please share :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, and to think I get overwhelmed parenting *one* hoh/deaf kiddo. You're a wonderful advocate!

Mom to Toes said...

OMG, this post is so helpful to me right now!

We have our first meeting with the school district (pre-IEP) on Feb 21.

I need all the help I can get. ;)

Loudest Mom said...

I'll let you know what other little tidbits the Audiologist from the AVT school shares (as well as the Speech Therapist). They are a WONDERFUL resource. I just really would like to see them compensated in some way. They have done it up until now, just because they are so committed to their current and past pupils.

VBnBama said...

We had to use only the new one for speech also. The rest of the time she wore both(unless I tricked her when her batteries went down, saying I had to charge the old one, she'd have to wait...when I could have used disposables) Only took about two months for the new one the be the "same" as the old one. Now she can answer all questions w/either or...but she does prefer both. Our therapist did a lot of babble w/the new one only and then did reg. stuff as well. Listening w/background noise,adding distance...you know the drill, y'all are pros.