Vestibular Testing at Mass Eye & Ear - April 25, 2008

Today Nichole underwent vestibular (balance) testing at Mass Eye & Ear. Because of the size of the testing room, they didn't allow me to come in (which for an engineer, is a bummer!). I will get a description of what they did from Nichole later and back-annotate this post.

Bus Stop Listening - Woodpecker getting breakfast (4/18/2008)

I walked Nichole to the bus stop this morning. As we were going down the driveway, she stopped and looked around, scanning the tree tops. She said "I hear a woodpecker". I too heard it. It was near the top of a 70 foot tall tree, who's trunk was about 70 yards away (about 75 yards from the bird to her ear). While she could not locate where the woodpecker was "ratatat-tatting", she could clearly hear it (along with other birds chirping). Maybe after her July surgery to go bilateral, she will even be able to locate the sound source too!

Speech Perception Testing 9-month post-activation (4/11/2008)

I received the Speech & Language assessment report from Children's regarding Nichole's referral for a second (bilateral) implant. The clinician had interviewed Nichole, asking her lots of questions, and had her do a list of Word Association for Syllable Perception (WASP) words that she had been tested on last year, prior to receiving her first implant. On the original pre-implant testing, Nichole scored a 33% accuracy with auditory-only information. On the retest with her CI (now 9 month post-activation), she scored 96% accuracy!!! Now if *that* doesn't show people the benefit of a CI, I don't know what does!

Approved for Bilateral CI !!! - April 3, 2008

We met with the Speech and Language Pathologist and Nichole's surgeon at Children's today. These were the final two appointments we needed to "pass" in order for Nichole to be approved for her second implant. The language testing went fast - Nichole has a very advanced vocabulary.

The meeting with Nichole's surgeon went very well. Dr. L. stepped through all the pros and cons of a 2nd implant. She told him how the CI on her right side was *so* much better than the hearing aid on her left side, and that she had tested both in different situations, and really wanted to have her left side implanted. He said he fully agreed, then said, "lets go get you a date"!! I had been expecting that their team would have to meet to discuss her case, as happened with the first one last year. Nope. He walked us to Sarah, the implant team coordinator, and asked her to schedule us for surgery. She immediately asked if July 11th would work for us! Yahoo. She knew we were looking for a slot right at the beginning of summer, and had lined things up for us. She is fantastic!. Nichole was very happy on the drive home! So now we wait.