checking links

For those of you who love links and research publications. Many of you frequently ask for the links to the research articles we talk about regarding cochlear implants. And many more of you are asking for research that has already been published. The links below are mostly links to links. Two of the three are overviews of multiple research articles, so you will have to dig further to read the actual research. I have not reviewed most of the research below, and do not hold an opinion on it. I am simply providing links for those of you who want them.

http://www.childrenshearing.org/custom/research_articles.html#psy

http://ccdam.gallaudet.edu/pdf/referencelist.pdf

http://archotol.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/130/5/547

School's Out

The boy has graduated, and the girl's last day is tomorrow. Her desk has been cleared out, and for all intents and purposes, everything is done. Her summer schedule is full. A week at Birch Bay with the grandparents, a week at church camp and a week in Oregon at the deaf camp, and we won't bother to be putting the suitcase away in between. The boy is now working on finding a job and planning for college in the fall. I don't think we will see much of him this summer.

Rachel's speech therapist has noted that her description of her new implant is changing. Not so much chimes and bells now, but still not sounding like normal speech. However, her brain is beginning to lower the pitch so things are not so high pitched sounding. We have noticed that she hardly ever needs us to repeat anything anymore. Her distance hearing has really gotten better also, as well as localization of sound. All the things we were hoping to see with the added bilateral implant. She goes in for her 6 month evaluation with her audiologist next month. We will have a much better idea of her progress then. But I don't need an evaluation to know that this was the right decision, and she is really benefitting from it.

They Clean Up Well

It was Senior Prom yesterday. The weather actually cooperated, and since spring has been late, the lilac is blooming late too. So it was still in full bloom and the perfect backdrop for the pics.

The boy has good taste, doesn't he?

4 Month Update

Tomorrow it will be 4 months since Rachel's right implant was activated. She is making slow steady progress. This morning at speech therapy, she got about 60% on all the computer games she "plays", except for one where she got 100%. The program is called Earobics. It is fantastic. There are about 4 "games" she plays with only her new right implant in use. There is an environmental sound game where she has 9 pictures to choose from when an environmental sound is played. Another plays two vowel sounds and she has to choose if they are the same or different from each other. A third game says a two syllable word, one syllable at a time. She has three pictures to choose from. This has been the hardest for her, and she usually has only gotten two out of 10. The one she is best at is the cadence game. It playes one, two, three, four or five sounds, and she has to decide how many sounds she heard. She generally has gotten either 9 ro 10 our of 10 on this one for a while now.

On the other games, she got 6 right today. 60%, even on the hard one where she has to figure out an actual word. This is still a ways from understanding speech in an open set, but it is good measurable progress. She is hearing from that ear, and her brain is making steady progress at making sense of the sounds coming in.

Another improvement is her distance hearing. Over the weekend, I was on the lower level of a two story room with an open living room. She was on the second story balcony in a sitting area. I called up to her, and she answered, even though she could not see me. Before her second implant, this would have been nearly impossible. I'm not sure that she even notices the improvement in her ability to understand sound, but improving she is! I'm thrilled.

My matress is 11 years old

Eleven years ago, I was at home eating dinner and waiting for the mattress company to deliver the new mattress we ordered. I was also 1 week shy of my due date to deliver our third child. Shortly after dinner, as I was relaxing and watching tv with my oldest, my water broke. Oh dear. My husband was at the gym, and our middle child was playing at the neighbor's house. What to do first? Track down the husband? Call the grandmothers? Coordinate with the neighbor to keep the middle child overnight? No. Call the mattress company.

The terms of the delivery were that it would arrive between 5:00 and 9:00 that evening. I called the warehouse, and got a somewhat snotty man on the phone. I politely asked him if he knew when the mattress would be delivered. He asked me when it was supposed to be delivered. I promptly answered "Between 5:00 and 9:00." He then shot back "Then it will be there before 9:00." I sweetly replied "You don't understand. There are extenuating circumstances here. I am 9 months pregnant, and my water just broke. We will be heading to the hospital VERY soon. So, when EXACTLY will the mattress be delivered?" He was no longer snotty. After a couple of uhs and uhms he asked me to wait just a minute. After a very short wait on hold, he came back on the line and informed me that the delivery people would be there within 20 minutes. "Thank you very much." They were there in 10, and out in 5, and they didn't want me anywhere near them. Apparently their contract specified that they only had to deliver mattresses, not babies.

Rachel was born a couple of hours later. Happy birthday baby.

Two Month Update

Rachel's new processor has been activated for almost two months now. She had her 5th mapping session today. As I had suspected by her recent progress, her map is getting stable and she is getting much better sound quality from her current map. They only did very minor tweaking today.

Now the real work begins. At first, it is all you can do to keep updating the map to keep up with the brain's need for louder and louder sound input. Now that the map has stablized and is at a level to give consistent quality sound input, she can start putting more effort into making sense of the sounds she is getting. I wonder how long it will be before she can hold a conversation without lip reading, using only her new processor?

Making Progress

We are approaching Rachel's 2 month post activation date. She was activated January 6th, and March 3rd will be 8 weeks. She has another mapping on that day. She attends weekly speech therapy, and each week we can see a measurable improvement in her discrimination of sounds. She is getting very good at understanding the cadence of speech. How many beats on the drum, how many sylabels in the word, etc... And she is beginning to recognise high pitch vs low pitch sounds.

It can be frustrating in the day to day activities because progress is slow. But she is making progress and that is all that counts. Seeing measurable gains is very encouraging. We are about one mile into the marathon.