Hearing Clinic

We finally had our Hearing Clinic appointment today to find out if a hearing aid would be beneficial for Averi.  It didn’t seem like it was going to be a very promising appointment when the first thing Dr. Kang said was that Averi hasn’t had any audiology exams with the same conclusions and he didn’t know what the actually hearing loss was.

Seriously?  She can’t hear anything from her right ear.  How confusing is that?

He examined her ears with the microscope and then sent us to audiology for yet another exam.  Not knowing that we would end up here, I had brought Kaili with me (which usually isn’t allowed).  She was not at all excited about sitting in the room with a stranger while Averi and I went into the sound booth.  After running several tests on her ears, they decided that their results were the same as the last exam – no response in the right ear.

We then went back to Dr. Kang who explained that there is no reason to put a hearing aid on her right ear to stimulate the nerve because the nerve is completely damaged.  The next step is to put a CROS hearing aid on her to take the sound from her bad ear and put it into her good ear.

When I asked about it he said that it is a head band that goes around her head with a piece on it that sits behind the ear.  I’m not going to lie – my first thought was that she was going to look really silly (it’s horrible, I know).  My second thought was how the heck we were going to keep it on her head without her ripping it off every 5 minutes.

Starting to be wary, I asked about the effectiveness.  It will improve her hearing from about 80-90% to 90-95%.  Now I’m even more skeptical.  I talked to several other specialist (speech, social worker, etc.) and then made an appointment to have Averi fitted for a trial hearing aid.

I talked to Dan about it when I got home and we decided that now isn’t the right time to do this whole hearing aid thing.  I don’t think she will keep it on and most communication with her right now is up close.  However, it is good to know that we will have options in the future if problems arise once she starts school and has to hear more things from a distance.  Until then, she better start growing some hair so I can do fun things with it before it’s covered up by this hearing contraption. :)