So after 3 years it all comes down to this.....Chance has a cochlear implant, and tomorrow it gets activated. We are very excited and can not wait to see Chance's reaction. Our hope is that this implant is going to give Chance that little extra boost that he needs to reach his potential.
When we first found out that Chance was deaf about 3 years ago, we did not really look at the implant as an option for Chance. We looked to hearing aids and thought those would be what Chance needed. When you find out that your child is deaf, there are several different voices telling you what is best for your child. These voices come from professionals, books and other deaf people and parents of deaf children. It is a lot to take in. You just found out that your child is deaf, and suddenly you are expected to choose how your child will communicate. The thing is, no one can tell you exactly what your child hears, or how well they will adapt to any sort of technology. As a parent you feel such a responsibility.....you are going to choose a path for your child that will affect their entire life and you feel that you don't have all of the pieces to the puzzle.
From the very beginning, Chance let us know that he wanted to talk. I don't know if the reason had to do with the fact that he had normal hearing for the first year of his life, or if he just thought he was talking for his first 3 years. WE were the ones with the problem because we could not understand him. Chance always talked to us. We just did not always know what he was saying. We had a deaf mentor come into our home once a week who was teaching our whole family sign language. We took sign language classes for parents. And the sign language did help at first. But Chance never took to signing entire sentences. He would sign words to let us know what he wanted. He even made up his own signs when he felt the need. But he never really took to signing entire concepts. When the deaf mentor would come over, we would sign apple as the mentor held up a flash card and Chance would say "apple".
So we figured that the hearing aids were the best option for Chance. His language improved with the hearing aids and he started the language journey that other kids his age were well under way in.
Since Chance attended a preschool with other deaf kids, we were able to see cochlear implants up close and the first time I saw the scar from one, I vowed that my little Chance was never going to go through that. The little boy that I saw, had a huge scar that looked like half of his head had been peeled back. It turns out that that little boy had some extra problems with his scar, so his looked quite frightening.
We ended up taking out a loan for hearing aids that helped Chance immensely. The first thing that we noticed was that his new aids did not squeal all of the time. When you are a hearing person, that can drive you crazy. Best of all though, Chance could hear things he had not heard before and his language started to pick up. But the progress was slower than was expected. It was recommended to us that we meet with the doctor who does implants in the state of Utah. There is a board that has to give an ok to those seeking an implant. Chance was denied at first. We were not heartbroken at this news. We were not sold on the implant for Chance at the time. We only wanted what was best for Chance and if hearing aids was what was best, we were willing to go along with that. The board decided that since Chance had just received powerful hearing aids, we should wait 6 months and see how those worked. So life went on.
We started to realize though, that there were lots of things that Chance just was not hearing. We would all be sitting at the dinner table together, and Chance would ask what we were saying to each other. It used to be that if I was talking to Chance's brother, Chance didn't say much. But he started asking why we were laughing, or what I had said. It was apparent that Chance was realizing that he was missing out on things. It was heartbreaking to watch as a parent. Chance wanted so badly to be a part of things, but he just was not hearing like he needed to. That is what brought us to the implant decision. It was gut wrenching. We studied and prayed and asked a lot of questions. Finally, we decided that getting an implant was the best thing for Chance. The implant board agreed that Chance could benefit from an implant and we were scheduled for surgery last July. Then three days before the surgery, our insurance company sent us a letter telling us that they would not pay for the $80,000 surgery. However, our insurance told us that we were welcome to go ahead with the surgery anyway if we wanted. We would just be paying for it. Since neither of us had a treasure map or that much money in a Swiss bank account, the surgery was off. We ended up fighting for a year to get the surgery covered all of the time realizing that each day Chance lost critical hearing time. It was so frustrating to go through all of the appointments, do all of the research and then to be told that our insurance, which actually paid for implants would not cover ours. We had a rough year wondering how to get Chance the help that he needed and filing insurance appeals. We wondered if we should start doing cued speech which is a way to supplement what someone is missing with speech. After much effort by doctors, teachers, audiologists and ourselves, much prayer and divine intervention(I mean that literally), Chance was finally approved by our insurance company to get an implant. So tomorrow, the journey begins......
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