Cochlear Implants: Part 1

Life is hectic. In the past five months we've gotten a new puppy, packed up and moved into a new house, had a birthday party in unpacked new house, buried the puppy after an unfortunate incident with a poisonous frog, had a baby, gotten a new puppy, celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Happy Heart Day, and Valentine's Day. We like to jump headfirst into things, apparently.

 

Somehow, with everything that's been going on, we also made the decision to move forward with a cochlear implant for Reagan. She went through all the evaluations, and both her ENT and audiologist agreed that it would be beneficial for her. But let me go back to the beginning of our hearing loss journey.

I like to think I know kids and have a pretty good understanding of their early development. When she was around three years old I noticed some things not quite right with Reagan. For instance, we'd go to Target and she'd walk to the other side of the clothing rack and become completely disoriented. I'd call her name and she had no sense of which direction my voice was coming from.  Sometimes I'd use a particular word and she wouldn't understand until I switched to a similar word, like cup instead of glass. All of her little eccentricities started to make me wonder, and a thorough google search made me fairly certain that she had PDD, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder. PDD is basically a big umbrella that multiple childhood issues fall under, including autism. I discussed it with her pediatrician, who wanted to hold off on diagnosing. To be honest, the only reason I was pushing for this particular diagnosis (besides the fact that I felt it applied to her) was because I felt that she would qualify for more services through Early Intervention.

In the meantime I contacted the local school district to have her evaluated, but because it was the end of the school year they said I'd have to wait until school started back in August. Patience is not my virtue, so I had Reagan evaluated for services at the Children's Hospital's therapy center. They determined that she needed speech therapy and physical therapy, but was otherwise on target. So I decided to go ahead and begin therapy for her. But of course there was a months long wait list, and none of the sessions would be covered by insurance. At $90 a pop, it was a pretty significant out of pocket expense. Luckily, we didn't have to wait more than a few weeks to get into the physical therapy program. Reagan started doing twice-weekly sessions. And then we decided to move...

Part 2 of our hearing loss journey will be posted later this week. Stop back by to hear how moving out of state made a difference in Reagan's diagnosis.