Friday, December 19, 2008

Bummer.

Well, we have been holding our breath for this date. Why? Because this was going to be the day that we found out exactly how deaf Molly is...or so we thought. What did we know before the appointment? Well, we knew that Molly had a hearing loss somewhere in the 60 - 85 db level. That much we knew or at least suspected from living with her for these past few weeks. So after waiting all this time, driving two hours to Birmingham and going through their "intensive" hearing evaluation we now know that Molly has a hearing loss...how much? We don't know? Is one ear better than the other? We don't know? Can she or will she be able to understand speech? We don't know? How much do her hearing aids actually help her? We don't know? Is she a candidate for cochlear implants? We don't know. Basically nothing was resolved. None of our questions were answered. We are exactly where we were and have been since we got Molly.

What we do know is that when she hears a sound sometimes she will choose to react to the sound and sometimes she doesn't. We also know that putting a little girl who doesn't speak or understand English in a sound booth and then saying over a speaker "Molly, look over here" doesn't get a reaction either. We are not even sure she knows her name is Molly.

Then they tell us that we can come back in a month to test her again..same test..but the test depends on Molly's decision to turn her head to a sound or not...it isn't based on what she can hear. So...if Molly isn't tired or Molly isn't bored by turning her head toward a speaker or if Molly isn't too engaged in the toy she is playing with during the test, we will get some results....and then again..maybe we wont...then we will wait another month...and so it goes.

What is next is we try to find another audiologist that is closer to home to do this testing. This wasn't much more than what we got in China when the doctor put the squeeky toy behind Molly's ear to see if she reacted. Why drive two hours to do that?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You should email Julie Bowers. She mentioned something about a hearing place that works with deaf children that are adopted from other countries.

Patientlywaiting said...

Well, it sounds like your first hearing test went about as well as ours with Claire. We left not knowing any more about her hearing loss then we did before. However, we discovered that she did have nonreactive eardrums which lead us to the pediatrician to discover a ear infection and fluid in both ears. They too put Claire in a sound proof booth and kept calling her name. I kept thinking I doubt she even knows that her name is Claire. A month later, they finally did the BAER (brainstem auditory evoked response)while she was sedated. It showed a profound hearing loss in both ears. Ours has been a frustating journey, we just now got her hearing aids after 5 months of being home. We are still trying to determine if she is getting any benefit from the hearing aids. She is so good at ignoring something or someone if she isn't in the mood to respond. Thank goodness for sign language. She has just soaked it up! Hang in there. These kids continue to amaze me with how well they adjust and how smart they are! We will be moving to Alabama this summer so we may be doing the drive thing to Birmingham for appointments ourselves.

Hugs,
Robin