Where does an ear go to die...?

So yesterday Kaelen had his follow-up hearing test at Australian Hearing. Whenever there's a significant change in someone's hearing, the initial test must be repeated 2 weeks later to confirm that those levels are still true before clinical decisions are made, much like when newborns are screened or tested if they don't pass the screening tests. That was yesterday's appointment.

I had been checking in with Kaelen throughout the 2 weeks to see how the ear was going, just in case there was a recovery. In my experience, what's recovered at about 1 week after the drop is pretty much all they're going to have, & sadly he didn't have any noticable change in that time. Each time I asked him about it, he said it was the same - no better, still not working.

The test results were, therefore, not entirely unexpected. They checked both ears, as always. The left ear has thankfully remained where it has always been but his right ear, the one which moved 3 weeks ago now, was either the same or worse across all frequencies. Then they did a test which we haven't had very often before, a single word test. They use inserts into the ears, so it's unaided, and they play a single word into one ear at a time to see what each ear is doing in terms of speech & language recognition. These results were simply mind-boggling.

In his right ear, he heard what he described as "a high beep", or "a low car horn". They stopped testing after 4 words, because it was obvious that he wasn't actually hearing words. Then they did the left ear. Although he didn't get every word perfectly correct, he actually recognised word shapes for every example given. So his left ear, previously his weaker ear, heard words quite clearly & in some cases absolutely correctly, but his right ear, previously his stronger ear, heard beeps & car horns.

Where does an ear go to die? Wherever that is, that's where his right ear has gone. There's nothing worth preserving there, even though the audiogram says he has some hearing left in that ear. My understanding is that we're being referred to the cochlear implant clinic.

Oh, and our ENT called on Tuesday with the CT scan results. Enlarged Vestibular Aqueduct bilaterally (both sides), but normal morphology of all other ear structures (middle ear bones, semicircular canals, cochleae). So now we know why his hearing is able to move, just not why it did this time...

Next appt: Wed 22nd May, implant surgeon initial consultation