It’s been a little while since I’ve written anything, so I figured I’d put a few updates out.

As the title says, we’ve got a lot of appointments coming up. Tomorrow at 3:15, I’m taking Alex to the audiologist. She’ll probably just give Alex new ear molds (his current ones are laughably too small) and MAYBE will do a sound booth test to see if he’s getting any sort of benefit from them. Zero hopes there, but that’s alright. Almost immediately after that meeting I’m going to have to run home so I can get him home in time for his physical therapy meeting. This one is kind of a big deal. We had a checkup appointment with Alex’s pediatrician, and when asked, he noted that Alex was a little bit behind physically. He didn’t think it was much, and he grounded us by making the statement that only 50% of kids are ahead of the curve, so it’s nothing to really be terrified about. Alex’s physical development is definitely something we want to make sure he stays on top of, though. Even though I don’t really think he has something like Cerebral Palsy, it’s still something I’m scared of. Alex still likes to fling his torso back sometimes, and we can’t tell for certain if that’s just a trick that he’s learned or if it’s reflux or if it’s something else. His neck control still isn’t perfect, but it’s been steadily improving. He can grab things with both hands pretty easily. He can stand up with support (i.e., his legs stiffen as they should). He hasn’t completely mastered tummy time yet, but I blame myself for that quite a bit since I basically tried to skip over that and put him right into sitting-up time (which he’s getting increasingly better at!).

Regardless of the things that he’s doing well, it’s tough not to fixate and worry on the stuff he isn’t, so we’re really looking forward to this next PT appointment so we can ask some pointed questions. We get that he’s behind on some stuff, but should we really be worried? Have you seen CP babies and did they look like this? What about other physical issues? The PT side of things is definitely something that’s weighing heavy, especially with Shannon who’s literally losing sleep over it, so we’re really hoping to hear some reassuring things tomorrow and keep plugging away.

Thursday morning we’re meeting with Alex’s teacher of the deaf. Not expecting anything crazy there, and I can’t really think of what we’ll be discussing. Nevertheless, we’re both fans of her, so I’m looking forward to talking with her and asking questions if anything interesting comes up. I’m somewhat dreading Friday. Around lunchtime, I’ll be taking Alex to get another blood draw for his next genetics test. We got the formalized results back, and they just tested for a single gene. The next round is going to be testing for 20-something different things. I have a feeling they’ll come back negative as well, but we’ll see. We won’t get those results back until after June, when Alex will have (hopefully) been implanted. He was an absolute champ at his last blood draw – no crying or anything, and he had a lot of swooning Quest employees “ooh”ing and “awh”ing over him. I hope he’s as awesome on Friday as he was last time around, but I won’t blame the little guy if he puts up a pout.

Monday is Alex’s MRI, which is the really scary one. The results of this test will determine if Alex is eligible for CIs and might give an indicator as to how compatible his anatomy is with them. It’s apparently very rare for patients to not be compatible, and when they are, a big reason for that is a missing auditory nerve. Alex’s can’t be missing because he can still hear very loud noises. It’s all of SOME comfort, but once you “win” the lottery once, optimistic chances don’t give me as much comfort as they used to.

For the MRI, Alex will require some form of sedation to make sure he stays still for the machine. It will most likely be administered by gas, and I remember reading somewhere that it could just be a very light form of sedation (like a sleeping aid). It sucks regardless. On top of that, Alex isn’t supposed to eat anything from midnight until when his MRI begins at 10:45. Seriously? Our six month old is going to be starving. Not pissed, starving. That’s really not going to help to tone down the stress of the whole event. It’s going to suck, but we’re just going to take it one minute at a time, get it done, and hope that we get back the results that we’re hoping for a few days after.

A lot happening. My hope at this point is that he has a quality physical therapy session that puts our minds at ease and that his MRI results come back quickly and that they’re encouraging. If those two things happen, it should be relatively smooth sailing until we come up on the surgery and genetic testing results. It would be nice if some of the stress dropped for a while, especially with spring and the promise of warmer days around the corner. Seems sort of symbolic when I think about it; it’s been a rough fall / winter, and we’re ready for some good news and a break.