The journey thus far... - part 4

So here we are, in January 2008, with hearing aids, and enrolled in Yeerongpilly ECDU for one-on-one speech lessons in 2008...and 14wks pregnant with our 2nd baby. Who would ever have thought that Mr. Holland's Opus would happen in real life - the musician who has a deaf child. Not that Jarrah's completely deaf, but impaired enough that he requires 'amplification', and probably wouldn't develop normal speech without 'intervention'. What's the logic behind a God-fearing musician being given a child who allegedly can't hear? I don't know, but what i do know is this - Jarrah loves music and all things that make it. He astounds the audiologists by loving to sit at the piano, and favouring musical toys over others - toy xylophones and the like. He can't help it, i'm sure it's in his blood and he sees and hears Mummy playing with those things, of course they're fun...just the audiologists can't understand how he gets any benefit from them whatsoever, based on his audiograms (test results). They figure he just can't hear them. We're just praying that our new baby will be a hearing child...

We saw our ENT again just a few days after the repeat VROA test and hearing aid adjustment, and based on the results we took to him, he began to make cochlear implant noises...the 'levels are approaching that deemed suitable for implants'...'maybe you should have a preliminary appointment with an implant specialist'...not exactly what one wants to hear only 2 months after seeing results indicating only a mild-moderate loss! Implants are so permanent, so final - and such poor sound quality. I'd like to avoid that option if we can.

By this time Jarrah also has had his first round of outer ear infections (another reason for the ENT visit), which means lots of smelly discharge from the ear, antibiotic drops required 3 times a day, and no wearing of hearing aids in the affected ear - which of course means communication is impaired, just what you need with a 19-month-old boy. We'd just seem to get one ear cleared up and the other ear would go down, so it was a game swings and round-a-bouts for a while. Our next Australian Hearing check-up wasn't until April, so we figured we had time to sort things out.

Enter Upper Cervical Chiropractic. Earlier in January, my Mum had forwarded me an article about this specialised branch of chiropractic which focussed on the upper 2 or 3 vertebra in the spine, and a small bone which sits between the vertebrae and the skull - the Atlas. For more info, visit www.upcspine.com but the basic idea is that misalignment of this little Atlas bone (about the size of a credit card) can have major repercussions in one's nervous system - including hearing loss. Because we weren't really getting any answers from the standard medico's, I figured it was worth a try, anything was worth a try to restore my son's hearing...