Word of the Week: Hedgehog

We had our Audiology appointments yesterday and gasp, all is well! Xander did amazing. It is so cool to see how the ways they test their hearing changes as they get older and are more interactive- able to point at things etc. Xander had fun wearing the headphones and the expressions on his face when he could hear the whistling were totally priceless! They hold a block and they are supposed to drop the block in a bucket when they hear the whistling but Xander didn't even need to drop the block to let you know he was hearing the whistles- his face said it all. Tympanograms show that his tubes are open and his hearing is within normal ranges. His right ear finally stopped draining so we are going to assume that the ear infection is cleared up for now. We did culture it last week and it was also postitive for MRSA, but the culture showed that it was sensitive to sulfa so the Bactrim should have worked. We'll just have to keep a close eye on it per usual.

James' hearing also appears to still be within normal ranges. He was much less cooperative than Xander so honestly I am not really sure how they tell sometimes. He did respond to voices so he can hear those at least. He wasn't very responsive to the tones but it's hard to tell if he really understood what to do when he heard random noises. I took him to the Dr last week and he didn't have any drainage in his infected ear then so yeah! The NP also couldn't see a tube in his left ear but his tympanogram Monday was normal for having a tube so either the tube was hiding or he still has a hole from the tube. So in anticipation of him being discharged from RISE for speech therapy I am going to take some videos of him so I can track his progress. He's been doing so well speech wise that without a documented hearing loss he no longer qualifies for early intervention. So here we have the word of the week (Xander may also make guest appearances....). Enjoy!