Finally getting around to this.

The day we had our dinner was the same day that we found out that Alex was going to be eligible for CIs. That was a pretty huge boost, so we walked in feeling pretty good.

The event itself was held in the basement of the building, so we got a quick look at some of the classrooms / playrooms that were setup.  Dinner was catered by a popular local restaurant. We sat down front and center and met with two other couples with hard of hearing kids. I can’t think of any remarkable conversations we had there, except that one of the couples knew in advance that it was going to be a near-certainty that their child would have hearing loss due to genetics (the mother wore hearing aids). That didn’t stop them, which is no surprise, but I thought that was sort of an interesting dynamic. Also nice – we got some good face time in with the administrator of the program, who is the same sweet woman who was kind enough to physically meet with us and tell us about the oral deaf school months back. We also saw our teacher of the deaf, speech therapist, and audiologist. Definitely feel blessed to have that kind of supporting cast who all work together.

The actual discussion was setup as a Q and A with four kids sitting at the head table.  One of the kids got a little shy and jetted out of the table, leaving three kids; one unilateral CI boy (I want to say he was about 9) and two twin girls (I think 11 or 12, but I’m sure my wife will correct me on this). One of the girls used two hearing aids, one used one hearing aid and a cochlear implant. I think they all started off with a quick introduction. Once they got to the boy with the CI, I definitely perked up, because this would be the first time we’d hear speech from a CI graduate of our boy’s future school.

And it was perfect. No affect detectable.

Now, his little boy did just give off a very quick and smart-alec remark, but it was enough to get a sense for how good his speech was. It was pretty cool to hear. He only had one implant, too! The downside to his smart-alec remark is that the crowd gave him a pretty big laugh, which guaranteed that every other answer he gave from there on out would be a one or two word deal looking for the same response, but that was sort of cool in itself. He’s a little boy, acting like a little boy.

The girls were pretty amazing. They had speech affects, but I didn’t really notice after two or three sentences. Great self-advocating, they explained that they were both great students, the works. Two very inspirational young ladies that definitely showed off a maturity beyond their age.

Throughout the talk I was amazed that these three kids were functionally deaf, yet here they were, hearing all of our questions without a hitch, talking about their experiences going to mainstream schools, etc. It all seemed amazing to me, and made me feel even more hopeful for Alex given that he’s going to go through the same program, but with another ten years worth of experience and another ten years worth of technology advances at his disposal.

I can’t think of too many answers that were given that really stuck out as interesting, but that’s probably because I’d already done lots of research so I was able to anticipate a lot of the answers. One of the topics that stuck for about 15 minutes was FM systems (an FM system is basically a wireless microphone that you give to a teacher / speaker / whatever that sends their voice directly into “listening” cochlear implants or hearing aids). It was a good conversation about how it’s important to keep them on and the struggles to maintain them, but it got a little long-winded given that most of the audience members wouldn’t have to deal with them for at least another five years or so. Sports was another conversation that went on for a bit and it went into some of the challenges CI users have there (helmets, waterproofing, hearing in loud environments, etc), but my takeaway was that it’s all absolutely doable with a little extra work. No problem, we’ll do extra work. The kids talked a bit about how they’d get pulled out of their regular classes occasionally for special speech therapy and things of that nature. That was a SLIGHT bummer to hear about because it’s another thing that’s going to broadcast to Alex’s peers that he’s different, but again… we’ll deal with it, just like these kids and their parents did and do.

Overall, I didn’t see anything really too surprising, but to see the kids in person was pretty inspirational and I liked seeing how the teachers interacted with the kids. You could tell that they had formed some pretty deep bonds.

I think that about covers it.

Nothing too new going on at the moment outside of that. I have to call our ENT and see what’s what in terms of making sure that our insurance is lined up and what they’ll cover – I just read on our Facebook group that many insurance companies will cover TWO speech processors per ear so that there’s always a backup, that’d be nice! We always have a close eye on Alex’s PT. He still likes to bob around, but as he continues to demonstrate that he can hold himself up in a sitting position firmly, it makes the bobbing look more like him saying “I don’t want to be held like this right now” vs. a physical issue. Regardless, it’s something we want to continue to stay on top of.

The genetic testing results still make me nervous when I think about them, even though we apparently won’t have those in hand for another month or two. Just really hoping that his deafness is all we have to deal with and worry about.

Past that, life is actually sort of normal. Alex still wears his hearing aids all the time even though we keep them off most of the time because of the incessant whistling, but he does great in NOT swatting them off. Hopefully that trend continues on and we get lucky enough that he doesn’t hate his CIs, because once he has those, they are staying the hell on. We’re going to take advantage of every minute of hearing time that we can early on and get this kid going.

Something we’re starting to investigate now is getting an FM system that we can use with Alex that we would own – most parents don’t have one because they’re typically only used at schools, but I’d love to have it for louder environments, long car rides, that sort of thing.

We still have early intervention appointments frequently, but they’re starting to feel routine and just slight pains in the ass rather than an invasion of our lives.

We’re still constantly concerned about Alex and his future, but it feels like things are starting to normalize just a little bit.