Grendel’s Kitchen

On Wednesday, we spent much of the day at Children’s Hospital. Li-Li, still playing after 5 straight hours of testing/mapping/assessing, and wearing her processor sans complicated and cursed babyworn cable like an adult nowadays!

We had a full schedule and still there was no nap to be had!

• Li-Li and I met with Dr. Terrell Clark to discuss going bilateral
• We met our wonderful new audiologist, Jennifer Harris (We’ll miss Jill, but Jennifer is GREAT and came from working at Li-Li’s school some years ago: TLC! And I can’t believe I forgot to take photos)
• Jennifer conducted booth testing without processor and then with hearing aid in left (unimplanted) ear
• Jennifer checked our equipment and found which of our 3 cords is the horrible faulty babyworn cable that trashed two lovely processors in a month and contacted Cochlear Americas for replacement of the cable and a lost magnet
• Li-Li received a brand new mapping:
  1. Everyday listening program with ADRO: for home, classrooms, music
     makes seamless adjustments as the sounds around her change. The individual channels representing quiet sounds (like a soft violin) are turned up, while loud sounds (like a car horn) are softened, so Li-Li can enjoy a comfortable listening level in any situation.
  2. Noise program (with AutoSensitivity): for noisy environments, crowds, restaurants
     Microphone sensitivity is automatically adjusted based on the “noise floor” of the surrounding environment. The noise floor is the level to which sound decreases during breaks in speech. This softens the background noise making it easier to participate in conversations in noisy environments.
  3. Everyday listening program with ADRO (same program as #1, just easy to cycle to)
  4. Quiet listening program with ADRO + Whisper: for bedtime stories, hiking outside, watching TV
     Whisper boosts softer sounds, such as crickets chirping or someone speaking in the distance that would otherwise be too quiet to distinguish—like a pair of binoculars zooming in on a small object, making it larger and easier to see. It brings the softer sound “closer” so that Li-Li can hear it better, while other louder sounds remain moderated as with her everyday listening program.

Some really interesting results (although I have to ask for the results and the new audiogram for specifics): her implanted right ear has retained much of its residual hearing and remained close to her levels tested last August — a huge surprise to us as we’d heard she would likely lose this as a result of the surgery itself or the body’s defensive reaction (ossifying bone) shortly after! And even more surprising: hearing in her unimplanted left ear has deteriorated significantly in a year, so she likely no longer hears jet engines without a hearing aid.

More on our very complicated and difficult bilateral discussion/decision later, but I think we’re OK to go according to the CI team and planning for surgery this summer!