mapping on a snow day

Yesterday was such a dreary day! We woke up to a blanket of snow that eventually got soaked with rain, becoming a wretched blanket of slush. Since our weather was somewhere between snow and ice, I took Ellis to his audiology appointment via regional rail instead of driving. He was absolutely thrilled to be able to ride the train and said "choo! choo!" the whole way there. I suppose I could've rescheduled the appointment, but I already had rescheduled it a couple of times, for various reasons, so we braved all the yucky slush.

At Ellis's last few audiology appointments, he has had a really hard time with the hearing booth. So at our previous one, I had made sure he had a good night's sleep, was well-rested, well-fed, well-connected, and by all accounts, it should've been fine, but it didn't go well at all. He was afraid the hearing booth. And was very unresponsive, though I, his audiologist, and his speech therapist (both of whom he really likes), knew that he could hear stuff. Needless to say, I was really nervous about yesterday's appointment. Especially since I hadn't had the opportunity to make sure all his environmental considerations were as best they could be. And then we slogged through the snow on top of it all (though, I don't he minded that part). But the appointment went great!

His audiologist did some tweaking before he got into the hearing booth, and I think that helped him warm up a bit. And his speech therapist (who he loves) helped out some, too. I think that helped him feel more comfortable, especially since at that point Marlowe decided not to take the nap he needed, and I had to leave the hearing booth.

I'm always amazed at how much he can hear with the CI. He was responding to sounds so quiet that I could barely hear them. But, as I keep reminding people, it's not all about the mechanics of sound, it's also how sound is mediated to the brain. There's "hearing" (the audiological act) and there's also "hearing" (the creative act).

A couple of months ago I attended a presentation that CHOP did about bi-lateral CI's. This is not something we're interested in right now, but I wanted to see what they had to say. One of the benefits that struck me was that of binaurilty, the way the ears interact together to bring sound to the brain. I wondered if wearing a hearing aid in his left ear could help Ellis in that respect, and also take advantage of sound stimulation on that side.

So the audiologist took an audiogram of Ellis's left side. E did great, and he got a really good picture of what was going there. His thresholds were at about 110-125 db (getting progressively worse as the frequencies were higher), that is, profound hearing loss. A hearing aid would only bring him into the range of moderate hearing loss, and probably wouldn't benefit him all that much, except for vague sound stimulation. It would not help to create a situation of binaurality; he would need a second implant for that. And like I said, we're not going down that path right now. So it was an interesting discussion, and I'm glad we had it.

In other CI news, Ellis is FINALLY wearing the babyworn snugfit on his behind-the-ear processor. He's always had a BTE, and would never wear the snugfit. We've had to tape it to his head everyday! (thankfully, he didn't have sensitive skin) But I think we may be entering a new phase of ease. (Though I'm still keeping the tape handy.)