Urgent recall...

School holidays! For the first time, I'm experiencing school holidays as a parent. And, i can honestly say, we need it! Jarrah has done well adjusting to school this year, but he's tired, and needs a break...as do i! The school is supporting him really well, he's one of two hearing-impaired kids in his class so his teacher gets lots of help from the Special Ed. unit (including AUSLAN translation of most morning lessons!), and extra teacher aide time. He's making friends, we're starting to hear their names, and his language continues to accelerate. Phew...

We had a little scare in early March, i noticed one Friday that MissJ wasn't responding to things like she normally would, and appeared to not even be hearing her name at a distance of 2ft...and, i began to notice some behaviours reminiscent of Jarrah pre-diagnosis. Of course this happened at about 5:30pm Friday afternoon, so i shot off a quick email to our Aus Hearing audiologist, trusting that they'll get it early the next week. Speech lesson on Monday confirmed my suspicion, that MissJ was hearing virtually nothing, and fortunately Aus Hearing were able to see us briefly on Tues morning. Her middle ears were clear, but there was a significant wax build-up in both ears - not helped, of course, by the fact she wears hearing aids all day! So we went off to our trusty ENT on Fri 16th March, who kindly removed all bar about 10% of the wax, and hopefully that will keep things clear for a while now. Her hearing did return before the ENT appointment, strangely enough, so I'm not sure that it was in fact the wax...

So, we took MissJ back to Australian Hearing for her follow-up appt on Wed 28th March, seeing a new audiologist cos our usual one was away, and the results were somewhat disappointing. She was in good condition and responded very clearly and reliably to the mid- & high-frequency stimuli, but virtually no response was recorded in the low frequencies. (Initial tests were done using "free-field", which just means the sounds are played through a speaker rather than tubes inserted into her ears, which she hates.) According to her ABR results from the newborn hearing screen we expected some response by around 60dB, although her very first VROA in May 2011 showed responses i think at 70-80dB...but this time, nothing at 500Hz. NOTHING. Yet, she continues to develop language (using the word "mine!" for the first time in my hearing *during* the test!!) and doesn't appear to hear any worse than she has previously. They also did some bone-conduction tests to see if that made any difference; I forgot to ask for a copy of the paper so i forget now exactly what the results were, but i don't remember being alarmed at the bone-conduction results so I guess they were within the realms of expectation.

So, we go on the "Urgent Recall" list.

Hooray.

Next appt: when they call us...