Twists and Turns...

yet moving forward!! This whole process has been one wild ride. Although it has been a winding journey, every step of the way we have felt peace and have felt that we are making some progress (no matter how small). We made another trip to Cincinnati Children's today as the doctor wanted to meet with us face-to-face. As we suspected, he has recommended that we postpone Ryan's surgery until he is older. We are thankful for his recommendation as we were prepared to tell him that we were going to opt to wait on the surgery, if he had given us the choice. His last test results have shocked everyone involved - not sure why this surprises us after all that we have witnessed since we first saw Ryan on the agency's website... We will continue to monitor Ryan's speech and language closely to insure that he continues to progress and he will continue to wear his BAHA. Within the next 6 months, if the BAHA continues to serve him well, we will consider taking it off the soft band and having the titanium rod implanted so that he can wear it that way. We will then postpone the surgery until he is 5-6+ years old. We are so blessed to have such wonderful resources in our area and it has been an awesome experience to witness Ryan hear the sounds that we take for granted each and every day!!

Amazed

Once again, we stand in amazement at the progress we have seen in Ryan....This past Wednesday, we went up to Cincinnati Children's for another audiology evaluation...Oh my goodness...It was like night and day. Ryan was ON FIRE!!! I could hear the audiologist squealing on the other side of the booth...This whole process of trying to figure out the extent of his hearing loss has been quite the emotional roller coaster. We knew with 100% certainty that this was the child God had chosen for our family and were 95% prepared to parent a child that was deaf if that be the case. We have never doubted the fact that there was some hearing, but from one appointment to the next we never really knew the extent. I constantly had various questions rolling around in my brain - "Is he going to be part of the deaf community or lean more to the hearing community?", "Will he need more services than the local school district can provide or will he need a school for the deaf (there are no interpreters in our school system at this time)?" - Factors that other people may not otherwise consider right way were constantly surfacing due to my background (communicative disorders/deaf ed. degree - I am discovering that many people did not know I had that, did you?? Well, that is an entirely different post that I will save for later).... At one point, the audiologist had reason to believe there was permanent hearing loss as he was not responding in the ways typical of children with this same condition. After 5 weeks with his BAHA (bone anchored hearing aid), I can tell you that on Wednesday his audiogram came out in the normal to slight hearing loss range...Yes, with his BAHA and 5 weeks of adjustment to it, he is hearing within normal ranges!!! We are now waiting for the doctor to contact us to see if he still wants to proceed with the surgery. We are 100% fine accepting his recommendation because our ultimate goal has always been to get Ryan's hearing to the highest of his potential. Ideally, the doctor wanted to wait until he was older, but because he was not hearing certain sounds in speech and the need for early intervention, he felt that was the only option. Now that we have some awesome test results, we will have to see where it all goes from here.