Grendel’s Kitchen

Wednesday was an extremely long day in the hospital: I won’t detail how excruciating it is to hold a struggling baby while an anesthesiologist holds a mask down on her panicked face. Or how she clung to Dr. Lin, her anesthesiologist, instead of her mom for comfort! But she’s gone into the void and come out again, and all is well!

No need for Myringotomy tubes, as originally thought, so after the exploratory eardrum punctures (ugh!) heal in a day or two Li-Li is in the clear for much head dunking under water to come, especially now that the new bathtub is nearly tiled! But the ABR diagnosis confirms profound hearing loss up to the levels that can be tested.

Good news is that she is a good candidate for cochlear implants — which we need to wrap our heads around before we decide to wrap hers around this bionic brain implant — and we’ll begin FDA-required hearing aid trials next week (?) for the next few months (although 95% of children in Li-Li’s situation receive no benefit, 5% do pick up some environment sounds like alarms, jet engines, but no vocals). Of course, I’d get this borg-like implant in a moment myself just for the cool technology, but the thought of brain surgery and the months and years of remapping the brain to hear is something we need to consider carefully for Li-Li.

One of our first questions was: what does Sound sound like through a CI? Alan Alda gives us the answer.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch we’re starting American Sign Language (ASL) lessons and Li-Li will go to school as early as next week! The Learning Center for Deaf Children in Framingham has an amazing all-ASL 2 hour Parent-Infant Program twice a week, and Li-Li will attend their staff day care along with a mix of both deaf and hearing infants and toddlers (children of the school’s staff plus 3 from the Parent Infant Program) with all communication in ASL. We’re so lucky to find this program: I’d been completely unsuccessful in finding day care specifically or deaf toddlers anywhere in Massachusetts.