The journey thus far... - part 2

Well, what a difference grommets made! It was clear from that same day that Jarrah could hear better. He lost that slightly confused look that he'd worn for months without us really noticing, only realising when it was gone, and his responses to sound were like nothing we'd seen from him before. Our ENT had apoken to me immediately after the surgery, saying it had gone well and they had removed a large quantity of thick fluid from behind Jarrah's eardrums, and that he was hopeful that this would have good effect on Jarrah's hearing. Well, he was right about one thing, the improvement was marked!

We had yet another ABR test scheduled for about 3 weeks after the grommet surgery, to give the ears time to fully dry out and any remaining fluid to drain away, so in late October 2007 we had our 3rd and most awful to-date experience of sedating young children. The medication they use apparently has a really awful after-taste, and this time Jarrah was much older than the first time, so he was able to fight the sedative effect longer and react more purposefully to the taste - in the form of clawing at his mouth to the point of drawing blood, and screaming blue-murder for what felt like at least 10 minutes. Sadly, the hospital was quite busy that day, so this happened in full view of all the other children waiting for their various procedures, which i'm sure didn't instill confidence in many of the parents waiting with them. I had to forcibly restrain Jarrah to prevent him from injuring himself, and i'm not sure who was more psychologically scarred by the event, him or me.

Once the sedative had taken effect we were able to begin testing. The results were drastically improved from what the VROA had suggested, but still in the ball-park of previous tests. He was able to hear down to 50db in both ears, which is still a moderate hearing loss but nothing a set of hearing aids couldn't help, so we were referred to Australian Hearing for "amplification". Gotta love the words they use for these things. I guess you've got to call it something sensible...

Our first visit to Australian Hearing took place in November 2007, at which they performed yet another VROA (puppet test) to confirm the results the ABR had shown. Aus Hearing were satisfied that these results were accurate, so a pair of hearing aids was planned. They had to take moulds of the inside of Jarrah's ears, which was another experience in itself! He was used to people looking in his ears and putting all sorts of things in his ears, but this stuff was cold and gooey, and another exercise in toddler restraint was had...poor kid, i'm sure he had no idea what was going on and why this was happening to him.

In early December 2007 we made our 2nd visit to Aus Hearing to collect our hearing aids. We were warned that some children take a while to get used to wearing them, that we should begin perhaps with just a few hours in the day and gradually increase the time, and that some children object to them altogether. Well, Jarrah was certainly not one of those children. The audiologists helped us fit them, and the look on Jarrah's face was priceless - a look of amazement, and a suddenly noticeable increase in response to sounds, yet again. He wore them all the way home, and all the way until bath-time without touching them once, and continued to do so for quite some time.