Now it really is urgent...

Well, maybe I misunderstood our last appointment. I thought we were on the Australian Hearing urgent recall list for Jonica, as it seemed her hearing was changing dramatically, but i think I ended up ringing them! Anyway, whichever way it worked out, today - Mon 14th May - was her follow-up hearing test to validate the slightly unexpected results of her last test in late March. See this post for what that was all about.

I nearly postponed today's appointment. All the kids have had mild colds in the last 2-3wks so i thought MissJ might have blocked middle ears and so the testing would be pointless, but as it turns out her middle ears were clear - hooray! Some negative pressure, which indicates slightly blocked Eustachian tubes, but clear middle ears is the most important thing.

The last 2 tests have been in what's called "free field". This is when the sounds are played through speakers into the sound booth. In this situation, it's impossible to determine which ear is hearing the sounds, but it indicates the level of hearing in the better ear. To test individual ears, small tubes ("inserts") are placed in the ear and the sounds are delivered to one ear at a time. This is how hearing levels in each ear at different frequencies are determined.

Today, we went the whole hog :-) After checking MissJ's middle ears, we went straight to the inserts and she tolerated them beautifully, didn't touch them for the whole test! She had a great time stacking cups and reading books and keeping lightly entertained (toys that are too interesting affect her willingness to respond to stimuli) while our friendly audiologist played a range of sounds from 250Hz to 4kHz. K sat quietly at first, but soon decided it would be more fun to go and "help" so he went into the other room and entertained himself for the remainder of the test.

I didn't really think we had noticed much change in MissJ's responses to sound. She's still been learning new words and coming when called (mostly!) and all the things we expected. We had never looked at each other and thought, "She's just not hearing us!"But today's audiogram tells quite a different story. It would seem that our ability to use the word "mild" has been curtailed, and a few new words have had to enter our vocabulary, "Implant surgeon" being among them. And now that i think about it, MissJ has been louder in the last few months than previously, and not *quite* as responsive as she was last year. So although she has continued to progress, the change has been so gradual that i guess i haven't really noticed that much.

She's not yet an implant candidate, but today's test results showed that her hearing levels are far from stable. In the late March free-field test, she showed no observable responses at 500Hz, yet today she consistently responded to sounds around 70dB. Her mid-frequencies (1kHz & 2kHz) were about the right "shape" as predicted by her newborn tests, but still dramatically different; instead of 40dB & 50dB we're now in the 70-90dB range. And 4kHz? This is where it gets scary. It seems her left ear was responding in the previous free-field tests, at a paltry 90dB(!). But the right?

120dB.

!?!?!

That's about the noise of a jet aircraft taking off. Louder than is really comfortable to listen to for more than a few seconds. 130dB is the threshold of pain - although I've also seen it listed as 120dB. Her newborn test predictions put 4kHz at about 70dB...not 120!

So, there are some changes to make. Firstly, she needs stronger hearing aids. Her cute little Nios Micro's jsut won't do the job for a hearing loss this severe, so we've ordered a pair of Phonak Naida's, like J's but a newer model which was jsut released in April. The biggest benefit of this is that it will give her access to an amazing feature called Sound Recover, which somehow (I know not how!) brings those super-high frequency sounds that she misses down into a range that she can hear, thus giving her access to those sounds.

Secondly, it has been recommended that we talk to out ENT about perhaps having a consultation with an implant surgeon...not to *do* anything jsut yet, but to get some opinions and begin the conversation, should it need to continue. Personally, I'd like to wait and see a little bit. Jarrah's hearing fluctuated til he was 3yrs old, so I'd like to give her til at least then just to see what happens. If nothing changes in 12 months, then maybe we're fine as we are. If other frequencies start dropping off the page, then we may need to do something. If things improve, we can always turn the Naida hearing aids down :-) Wouldn't that be nice?!?

So, another urgent appointment, but this time it really is urgent - Monday 28th May, back at Aus Hearing, fitting new Naida hearing aids. I really hope we get to turn them down one day...