Than this?!?!This little girl has captivated our hearts and we just think she is the most perfect, cutest, fabulous little girl in the whole wide world. She is so busy that I can only get my hand on a camera when it gets close to bedtime!
Thanks to all of our friends and family that have been checking in with us. It really means so much to us that we have such a wonderful support group. Sorry to those who called/texted Thursday and got no reply. It took us some time to absorb and process the news, but things moved QUICKLY and we haven't looked back.
Cohen's surgery revealed that Cohen had an unrepairable perforation in her left eardrum that will serve as a "tube" for drainage and the right ear tube was replaced without difficulty. Her adenoids were removed also with no problems. While she was still asleep, we had opted for an Auditory Brain Response test to detect hearing deficits. With her speech delays, we were ruling out a hearing impairment. The test revealed that she had mild/mod hearing loss in her right ear and mod/severe loss in her left ear. This was so shocking to us. We were prepared to hear that it was fluid causing what might be a hearing impairment. He left ear might improve a small amount if her eardrum repairs itself, if not a patch will be performed.
The only option for her at this time will be hearing aids. It is amazing how things began to fall into place. On my way home from the hospital, I stopped by CVS to fill her prescriptions and in walked Dr Flowers, Cohen's ped. He had already received a message from me and asked me to go ahead and explain it all to him right then. 5 minutes later he had a planned laid out and rolling! Friday morning, We met with Magnolia Speech School's hearing impaired department and toured what will be her classroom hopefully in August and met with an audiologist that will be our mentor through this process. Jennifer was wonderful and answered our 1,000,000 questions and gave us a simulation so we could hear exactly what Cohen hears. It was very eye-opening yet encouraging at the same time. We quickly realized how much she had to concentrate to hear, but we also realized that she CAN hear.
We spoke to our insurance company and are very grateful that at least part of her hearing aids will be covered and that UMC and Magnolia indicated that we could receive these within the next few weeks-- they are out the month of July, so they want her to have them before then. So needless to say, we have received more education, spoke to more people about things we are cluless about, and in the meantime pampered to a recovering 18month old! We do have a few reservations over the next few weeks. We are definitely unsure as to what childcare will be throughout the summer after she gets her hearing aids. I do not think that a classroom full of 12 18month olds are the right place to transition to hearing aids :) We are also just plain scared. We do not know the etiology of her hearing loss, we do not know if it has gotten better or worse since birth, and we do not know yet if it will improve or get worse. We do know that God gave us the baby girl as ours and we are unbelievably grateful that she is ours and that He has given us the means to provide for her everything that she will need.
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