Sora's ENT & Audiology appointment

On Tuesday we brought Sora back to Children's hospital for more appointments. Basically, they want to figured out how well she is hearing - both in her good and bad ear. Man, these appointments took forever. First we went to the ENT. They looked her over quickly and then sent us to audiology for a hearing test. This was a pain. We waited for quite a while and she was getting tired. The test they did was a behavioral one - e.g. there is a beeping sound on her left and when she looks to the left a little animal pops out with lights and starts dancing. I guess the point is that as soon as a child hears the sound they will look - that way you know they are hearing. The only problem is that she's only 11 months. She has to cooperate. There was a woman with with us trying to keep her attention facing forward. Sora did pretty well. She was tired and not concentrating as much as she could. But basically, she would hear the sounds pretty well. Even the audiologist said that this type of test didn't work perfectly for a child so young.


Then we went back to the ENT - waited some more. Then two different doctors came and checked her out. Basically they said they want to do a sedated ABR test. This is done in the operating room with her under anesthesia. They will check both ears to see how well sound is being heard as well as her brain's response. This will tell us not only how well her good ear is hearing but if her Microtia ear has the capacity to hear as well. This is really important for know what to do now and in the future. Unfortunately, either way there are a million different options - all with their up and downsides. Do we give her a hearing aid now? If so, what kind? Do we wait until she's in school? In the future does she have the surgery to create an ear canal, or does she just use a hearing aid the rest of her life? What kind of plastic surgery to we use to fix the external ear? So many options. But the good part is that if this test we have coming up shows that her good ear is working well, we probably don't need to do anything right now. We'll just have to have hearing tests every 6 months or a year to make sure it's staying healthy. And we'll have to monitor her speech progress to make sure she's hearing well enough to learn to pronounce words.

This child is so strong. You might not be able to tell, but her feet are off of the ground. She is always doing chin-ups around the house to try to see things on a table or something. It's amazing.

I'm still so surprised at people's reactions to us sometimes. When we first went into the ENT, the nurse was asking us all sorts of questions about her past (e.g. did she fail her newborn test). After saying "I don't know" to a few of the questions, I finally said that she was adopted and we had only had her for 3 weeks. The nurse said, "Ohhhh, she's adopted?" The funny thing is that both Damien and I were there. I guess Damien could have just been my boyfriend and Sora be from another relationship or something? Anyway, strange?