A VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN

I seem to be having some trouble uploading pics on Blogger tonight.

We took Molly to her Audiologist to be activated this afternoon. What a cool day it was!!!! I will write more later, but the visit was extremely encouraging. She responded very well to different sounds. It looks like the implant is working!!!! Praise the Lord!

Six days to go until Halloween, turn-on day. Um, let’s just say we’re a little excited!!!
As you can see in the picture, Molly’s scar is healing beautifully. Now that most of the swelling is gone, you can see and feel the very defined implant beneath the skin.


Would love to share yet another LINK /video clip with you. ABC’s "Good Morning America" covered a remarkable and touching story about the McBride family, which some of you may have seen in May 06. All four family members are deaf and can hear with the aid of a cochlear implant. Recently, three of them were bilaterally implanted. Just thought this would be helpful in seeing not only what the external device looks like, but also how each family member is progressing in speech/ language. Amazing!

Our Bionic Baby

Molly is blessed to be implanted in a time of such advancing technology. Over 60,000 people in the world have been implanted. The FDA began to approve implantation in adults in the mid-80's and extended it to children in the 90's.

The very primitive devices had 1 channel. Multiple channel devices were introduced in the 80's which helped greatly with speech recognition. I’m not certain, but I believe that Molly’s device has 22 channels. We will learn more about the device in the next few months. Huge learning curve! I tell you all of this because I want to share a couple websites with you. Both sites have audio demos that simulate what speech/music would sound like through a cochlear implant. Audio Demo1 , Audio Demo2






Molly testing out her healed head wound.

Kids are unbelievably resilient! It is day 5, post-surgery and Molly is definitely back to her usual self. She had discomfort in her left ear and around the incision for a couple days. The area around the incision has had minimal swelling and bruising, however that ear has been swollen enough to stick out. If you would like to see her incision and partial mohawk, click here. Mike was VERY pleased with the surgeon’s work, but it made me a bit queasy to look at and touch (keeping it moist with vaseline).

A number of people have asked us if she is able to hear now. So I guess I should explain a little bit about how the process works. The small device that was implanted is simply the "rewiring" to her hearing nerve. It replaces the structures she was born with that don’t work. After the surgery site heals (typically 3-4 weeks), the external device (which includes a microphone and sound processor) is attached at our follow-up visit with her Audiologist. I’ll also explain that the sound that goes into the microphone is converted, in the processor, to digital sound/coded signals that are transmitted through the implant to her hearing nerve. Yes, Pretty AMAZING!

The events of October 5, 2006 proved to be better than expected. Everything about the day was clearly orchestrated by God’s gracious hand. We were very pleased with the personnel at the hospital. They made us feel quite comfortable and they responded well to all of Molly’s needs. Molly's surgeon said that things couldn't have gone better.
In case you are interested in reading about the implant procedure or want to see a diagram, click here.

Here’s a run down of the last two days:
10-5-06
6:30 am- arrival at hospital
7:15 am- Molly taken to surgery/Parents went to waiting room
10:40 am- Reunited in the recovery room
11:30 am- Discharged home
7:00 pm- Down for bed (with a little codeine)
10-6-06
7:00 am- Molly woke up in her usual form
6:00 pm- bandage off


Here is our "wounded soldier", as daddy likes to call her, at breakfast this morning. Her face looked a little puffy from the dressing.

THE BIG DAY
We give all the praise and glory to God!!!!
Thank you for all of your prayers. All went well today. I will write more tomorrow. It has been a long day. Thought I would post a pic of Molly pre-op and post-op.

Molly waves good-bye to her parents before she is taken into the operating room.

A little groggy after anesthesia

Guess I should give a little background on Molly and our journey this past year before we jump to the implant stuff. I will try to leave out the details and give you the facts. Molly was born a year ago in September 05. She failed her newborn hearing screen in the hospital and we were referred to the Audiologist/ENT for further testing. At three months, the Audiologist did an Auditory Brainstem Response test with results that showed Molly to have a severe-profound hearing loss in both ears. Oye, what do you do with that information as a parent? I’m not even sure if I could explain to you all of our thoughts and emotions at that point. We were grateful for the prayers of many and were comforted in our reassurance that God is in control.

Thankfully our town of Johnson City, TN has incredible early intervention services (incredible individuals who worked with Molly). They gave us the information we needed to make some crucial decisions for Molly and brought us much HOPE for her future in the hearing world. Because of their help, Molly was fitted with hearing aids at 4 ½ months. With the aids, she was responding inconsistently to loud environmental sounds. I should mention that it was quite a battle to keep her aids in her ears (she thought they were better suited in her mouth). Anyway, she was weekly being seen by the PhD/graduate Audiology and Speech Pathology students at ETSU. We were seeing quite a bit of progress as time went on. At 10 months she was mimicking the syllables/pitches of some words, but still not mimicking vowel/consonant sounds (other than Aaaa and MaMa). The input given by the aids was still not enough for speech and language development, so we began to move forward with the cochlear implant. We met with the implant team at UVa and they confirmed that Molly was a good candidate for the implant. When Molly was 11 months, we left the Volunteer state and moved to the Cavalier state of VA. So here we are at 13 months, gearing up for surgery on Thursday and her activation on Halloween.