Clarification

I had never heard of aural rehabilitation prior to our appointment last December. I think the proper term is "habilitation" as it is teaching the child to use the hearing he/she has rather than reteaching the child to use the hearing he/she has. Aural habilitation teaches the child to maximize and use the residual hearing to it's full capacity. It focuses upon sound detection, descrimination (similarities and differences between speech sounds), auditory comprehension. That is a very brief summary and I look forward to seeing if this additional therapy will be beneficial for Ryan!

Progress Has Been Made!!

Today was Ryan's visit to Cincinnati Children's Hospital for a hearing evaluation and to visit with the otolaryngologist. I dare you to say that 5 times!! The audiologist was floored as he talked up a storm and was telling her these elaborate stories. If you had asked me how he did during the testing, I would tell you that he was not responding very well as he was a bit off task. If you asked the audiologist, she would tell you he did great! I guess by changing around the tasks and the ways to respond she was able to acquire the information necessary to do a thorough evaluation. It is so amazing to think back 15 months ago when he had just gotten his BAHA and how he would not respond at all to the sound or her. His hearing is consistent with the tests in the past and they still believe that the BAHA is providing him without enough hearing to see progress in his speech and language development. So, we will continue on. We are now in a new phase and will have him evaluated for aural rehabilitation/therapy. This will be done at Cincinnati Children's hopefully before school starts and if they decide that he would benefit from therapy then we hope to get a referral for that closer to home. After our audiology screening, we went to see the otolaryngologist - dare you to say it another 5 times!! He was pleased with the progress and we discussed our options again. We have several options at this point and although no surgeries can be performed until he is 5 or older, we feel like we need to begin down that path of researching thoroughly our options (or I should say the options that will be best for Ryan), evaluating the pros and cons of each option, etc. We have no clear direction at this point and initally both Mike and I are on different pages. We will continue to do our homework and begin praying diligently for God's direction. This is such a tough decision, but we know that God will make it clear (in HIS time) what is best for Ryan! Oh, forgot to mention the purpose of the title of this post - Ryan actually let the doctor's assistant (who was wearing the dreaded white coat) look at his ears! You have no idea what a huge step this was and he was so proud of himself!! He doesn't know yet that he is going to see his pediatrician tomorrow for a "well child" visit. I pray that he does just as well. I think if I convince him that no shots are involved, he will be fine with it! Well, that was today's visit in a nutshell...