It’s pretty crazy to write this and think that a week from now, Alex will have undergone his CI surgery to place the electrodes into his little cochleas and give him the foundation he needs to be able to start hearing us.

I feel strangely calm about the whole thing. I think most of that is because Shannon and I have both done our research on the surgery and, maybe more importantly, we’ve seen a significant amount of parents post on the forums we read every day about how they went in for surgery and it was a relative cinch. It’s also nice to know that it’s very likely that he’ll be home the day of his surgery as well. We’ve already seen Alex go under from anesthesia twice now and know that he doesn’t have any really terrible reactions on his way out, so that’s not a huge concern either.

I’ve written before that I have a lot of conflicting feelings about the surgery, but the one that trumps the rest is that it’s going to be great to just be done with it. The thing I get the most emotional about is when I look at his perfect little head and think about the fact that he’s going to have scars on it for the rest of his life unless he goes out of his way to undo them (and we WILL give him that option down the road if he wants it). The implants being in his head don’t bother me too much because I’m completely of the mind that over the larger scheme of things, they’ll be temporary (based on the stuff being worked on now and future tech), and they’re going to enable some wonderful things that he simply doesn’t have access to today. I’m completely encouraged by the results that other parents have gotten in the past using older technologies and therapy methodologies, and it’s comforting to know that whatever solution we give Alex now, it’s going to be the most crude he’ll ever have to deal with. It’s only getting better as time goes on – just ask the parents who went through this in the 90s when processors were still body worn and barely gave access to speech.

All of this said, I have no doubt that this is going to be one of the toughest steps of the journey. Friday’s going to be tough, and I’ve often read that the surgery day is one of the hardest parts of the beginning of the journey, but the good news is that it’s relatively downhill from there. We’re going to have our issues, we’re going to have a lot of speech therapy to put the little guy through, we’re going to have to advocate for him, but I think that stuff will be a little easier to deal with because we’ll have a lot more control in those situations.

Even after all of the hours of researching and reading blogs of the parents who have already gone down this path, it blows my mind that in a month or so, my son is going to be able to hear me say his name, his mom tell him she loves him, and his older sister sing “Frozen” over and over again. I’ve brought up a few times with Shannon since we got our surgery date that I was stoked that Alex would have his “ears” for Christmas this year, especially since I feel that we were sort of robbed of a good one last year since the news that he was deaf was still very fresh at that point. One year later, he MAY be saying a few words here and there. Just awesome.

It’s going to be a hellishly long five or six hours. But I can’t wait to put this puppy behind us and get to the good stuff. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel.