What we Know

On Friday we had our hearing test with little Corrina. Let me just say that she did marvelous! In order to get an accurate reading the children need to be quiet and still; so in the case of a baby, asleep. We had Corrina skip her morning nap and we picked her up from daycare at 1:00. She fell asleep in the car and thankfully we were able to carry her into the Hospital without waking her up. The audiologist attached the Electrodes behind her ears, and one on her forehead. She hardly stirred for this. Apparently the Electrode on her forehead was just to monitor her sleep, which reported that she was just about as asleep as can be! We are so thankful.

As many of you know already we were given the information collected from the tests that day, and Corrina is indeed Profoundly Deaf. I'm not talking hard of hearing here, but DEAF. This is not the same problem that Dave and his brother Mark had as children either. There is a small chance that a hearing aid might help her hear, but as she hardly has any residual hearing i doubt those will work. When they ran the tests they used a complete range of sounds from very low tones (her right ear may have had a small response to a very loud, low tone; if a jet engine flew directly above her head she may hear a slight sound), to high pitched noises, and everything in between. I believe the loudest that their speakers could go was 115 decibels--around the volume of a jack hammereven at such a volume she did not respond.
As a family we have a few options. There are two different types of speech/hearing/communication therapy available: one deals with teaching children to communicate using sign language, lip reading, and other techniques (Canadian Associate of the Deaf). In that case the children would use a hearing aid if it helped, or just remain deaf and learn to communicate through signs, etc. The other therapy utilizes what is called a cochlear implant.
A cochlear implant, in short, is "a surgically implanted electronic device that provides individual with the sensation of hearing by bypassing the damaged part of the inner ear." (taken from web link above) Once the implant has been put in (through surgery), Corrina, Mom and Dad would attend weekly (up to 3/4 times a week) speech therapy sessions which would teach her how to listen, understand, make words and speech, and talk! This program has the goal of integrating people into the hearing world, whereas the other program has the goal of teaching people how to communicate in the deaf world/culture.

How we feel: overwhelmed! There are a lot of choices and decisions to make in the next week. Corrina is still sweet, charming little Corrina. That will never change. However we do need to start something soon because she is at the age where she would be learning language. Because we are finding this out while she is still quite young we will be able to help her sooner thus she won't be too far behind those in her age group. Her challenges and developmental delays would be much more significant if she were older. We are so thankful to God that we have friends and people around us that helped us to see that Corrina might not hear, and supported us as we went through tests and such. We have much more to come and we know that we will need to be very supportive and work very hard to help Corrina learn to communicate, but we are willing. She is precious and important. We love her!