Riley has had an infection in the left CI since a week after her surgery. We have been driving down to the hospital every other week to try to get this taken care of; unfortunately the time came where we had to take it out. Taking out a cochlear implant is not a common procedure, infact if they have to take out everything, including the electrodes then there isn't hope of putting it back in.
That's where mom started to freak out! I really wanted the device to come out before the infection took over everything, including the electrodes. Fortunately he was able to take out the top part and but it off deep enough to keep the electrodes in. That is all we could hope for. 6 months down the road she will get her left CI back in.
For right now we are jumping into therapy head on. Speech therapy once a week, developmental therapy once a week, and online therapy twice a month. This little girl is taking it like a champ; she is listening better that 2 and 3 year old I know. You see, there is a difference between hearing and listening. Some parents will assume there child is listening because they can hear. Hearing and listening go one on one but are two different things. She is actually LISTENING to the sounds, voices, movements and anything else she can. She looks to ever sound. I don't have to say her name twice, or three time, or even yell....she listening. This is something we are going to keep teaching her. Everytime she listens, we point to our ear and let her know....Yay good listening.
She bangs on pots and pans and laughs, she points to her nose when I say "nose", she opens books and starts jabbering like she is reading the book because she gets read to every single night. She said "uh oh" for the first time two days ago. This girl is really taken off, and with one ear.
We had a booth test done when we were at Riley to see where she was on the "speech banana" and how many decibles she is really hearing at.
The blue line is where Riley is hearing these days. She is at 25 decibels with her tones and 10 with speech. SHE KICKED SOME MAJOR BUTT at the testing!! This is a girl that was hooked up to IV and didn't each since midnight. Everyone was in awwww over this girl and her jump from last test. Her last test she was hearing at 32 speech and 52 decibel.
Testing a toddler is hard because they are on your lap playing with toys. Now what child wants to turn their head to each "beep" or "ba ba ba" that they hear when they have a cool toy in front of them. So testing at this age is not always 100% accurate but I am definitely going with this!
This little bump in the road i think has made our family stronger and more determined to work with Riley in every aspect of her development. I am learning so much about speech, motor and even gross motor skills than I ever thought I would, and I wouldn't change it for anything.
Riley is doing awesome! Thank you for all your calls, texts and more importantly, prayers. You are all loved!
Merry Christmas!
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