Hearing Aids on Stephen????Yes, it wasn’t exactly the news we wanted to hear AGAIN. After Stephen was born we were quite anxious to have the nurses do the new born hearing screen. They were having some trouble with the OAE testing equipment that day, so they decided to test him the next morning. He actually passed the test and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We set up an appointment to have our audiologist do an ABR test on Stephen, whether he passed his OAE or not. We knew that he had a 25% chance of being deaf if what Molly has is genetically related. We never did do the blood test, but we were pretty sure it was genetic. So we were optimistic that he would pass his ABR, seeing as he passed his OAE (Molly failed her OAE). Unfortunately, our Audiologist was not able to get a response from the hearing nerve pathways. She said that he most likely has what is called Auditory Neuropathy. In my understanding, this diagnosis is given when there is hair cell activity present in the cochlea (which the OAE shows), but no neural components of the ABR are present. AN seems to be quite rare in congenital hearing loss. AN patients could have hearing loss ranging from moderate to severe. There is an outside chance that he could get by with just hearing aids. Our plan is to monitor Stephen with hearing aids for the next 7 months. If we see that he is not hearing enough for speech/language, we will move ahead with the Cochlear Implant when he is 10 mos old.
We take great comfort in knowing God’s purposes in all of this are right and good. Molly’s progress has given us much hope for Stephen’s future in the hearing world.
7 comments:
This must be very difficult for you guys. We will be praying for your kids as well as for you, as you go through this process! Your kids sure are cute! :)
Hey, thanks for updating the blog so that we know what is happening. We pray for you all often. Carena continues to ask when we are going back to see Molly. We know God has a special plan for you all and your beautiful children. We can rest in His perfect plan.
The kids are so cute!! It is great to hear how Molly seems to be taking off with her speech!! I am sorry that you are having to go through it all over again with Stephen. We will keep you guys in our prayers. It was great to hear from you!!
Tesha
let me try again...stephen is sooo cute! thank you for the update. wish we could see you guys soon....
Aww I miss you guys! It must be so hard for you to face these challenges each and every day! But praise God for progress! And for some really adorable kids!!! It was so nice to hear from you! I definitely have to visit sometime when I'm not all the way across the country! But I'm loving Alaska and the hospital experience has been good so far. God bless! I miss my "extended" family! Love you!
Robyn,
I'm just reading this for the first time in july 08. We're praying for you guys through this process. One sidenote: Micah has the same outfit Stephen is wearing in the photo! It was one of his favorites all winter long!
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