Jarrah - Mater Implant Team appt

Tues 28th Oct - Today we had an appointment with an audiologist from the Mater Hospital's Cochlear Implant team. Our ENT has been making implant noises all year, and because he freely admits he's not an implant specialist he encouraged us to have a meeting with them sooner rather than later, just in case implants would be helpful. He basically said he didn't want to mess us around by saying we didn't need to talk to them, only to find out in a few years time that we should have gone years ago...so i feel like he did the best thing for us.

We got to meet a new audiologist! And just when we thought we were getting to know everyone... Anyway, we sat and talked over Jarrah's history (the whole 2 years of it!) while he played at a table nearby. I got to see a real live implant, both the piece that is surgically implanted as well as the external component. I've seen plenty of the external components at playgroup, but i'd never seen the piece that actually goes in the head :-s It's impressive, really, how much is done by such small components, and it's amazing what functionality such a device gives to people who would otherwise hear virtually nothing.

We chatted, Jarrah played, Jarrah sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (clearly enough that the audiologist recognised it), Jarrah investigated all the computers in the room (as he does!), and Jarrah basically convinced the audiologist by all this that he doesn't need implants.

HOORAY!!!

This is probably the best news we've ever received from an appointment for Jarrah. I must confess that i would have been surprised if we'd been told that he did need implants - he seems to have a fair bit of residual hearing, all or most of which would be destroyed by the implants - but, not being an audiologist or having any experience in the implant area, i really didn't know exactly what to expect. Jarrah's audiograms (hearing test results) apparently make him look like a classic implant candidate, but his functionality seems to be waaaay better than his audiograms would indicate.

So...this presses the Pause button on this option for now. We may need to revisit implants once J starts school, depending on how well he copes with a more difficult listening environment, but at least we have a few years between now and then. No testing was done at this appointment - i think that had been the plan, but once the audiologist saw what Jarrah was doing, and once we said we were due to see Aus Hearing next week, it was decided that tests were not necessary today. At some point soon Mater do want to do a Speech & Langauge assessment so that, if Jarrah's hearing deteriorates in the future, we have a baseline with which to compare.

I think Jarrah gets songs "on the brain", like a lot of people do. I very often hear him singing away during the day, quite a mixture of songs, and i recognise most of them. Occasionally there will be one that i can't work out, but it often comes around again and again over a few days, and i'll eventually figure out what it is. He also shows that he can discriminate between instruments on a recording - if i play a CD that is pure piano music (eg. Suzuki Piano Bk 1) he will move his fingers & hands as if playing the piano, but if i play something that's heavy on guitars or drums (eg. Colin Buchanan) he'll either strum as if playing a guitar or flail his hands as if playing the drums :-) It's very cute to watch, but it's also encouraging, cos i can see that he's getting good timbre information.

Sometimes people with hearing losses don't just have lower hearing thresholds, but they can also have distortions of what they do hear. That has made me wonder on occasion exactly what Jarrah hears, and whether he hears clearly or not. I'm beginning to conclude that he hears reasonably clearly, or without much distortion. For him to make such distinctions of instrumental timbre, he must have enough clarity to be able to hear the difference.

And i've just today realised why continuing with signing is still important for him. For words that sound similar yet are quite different, i'm not convinced that he hears the subtle differences just yet, so doing the sign for those words helps him to understand that i really am saying a different word. I can't remember quite what it was i was saying to him today, but it was a word that could have been confused with another one he knows, and i suddenly realised that at this point in time it is mostly the sign that differentiates between those two words. Because i can't be sure exactly how clearly he's hearing my words, it would appear that the signs will be helpful in allowing him to understand a wider range of words, and prevent confusion. That might seem like an odd observation to make, but it reinforces to me why i should continue learning signs. 

Not that i'm worried about learning more sign, but it helps me to know i'm doing the right thing...

Next appt: Tues 4th Nov, check-up for Jarrah @ Aus Hearing