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Sunday, September 20, 2015

Being in the booth with Chance

Ahhhh, Chance and I got to spend time in the sound booth again last week.  We have been doing this for years now.  Actually, I have not been in a booth with Chance for a while as he is old enough to listen to the beeps on his own.  I went in this last week though just to see how he was doing.

I love implants, I really do.  They have done so much for my children and opened up a whole new world to them.  They are amazing and I am so grateful for the man who invented them and for the companies who make them.

Implant hearing is amazing but Chance is still deaf and does not hear as well as I do.  When we sat in the booth together, we were having a great time.  Chance would tease me about things and I would tease him back.  Then it was time to be quiet and listen.  The audiologist did the sentence test with background noise where a man says a sentence with people talking in the background and Chance repeats what he hears.  The voices in the background start out low and then get louder as the sentences go on.

The sentence may be something like, "She said she will come by tomorrow."  It sounds as if there is a party going on and you are listening to someone speak as several other people at the party are having their own conversations in the background.

Chance did really well.  He was hearing much of what was said at first. As the background noise got louder I could hear all of the sentences. Chance could not.  At one point at the end, Chance just looked at the audiologist and said, " I have no idea."

Experiences like this make me appreciate Chance and his efforts to hear even more.  He lives in a world full of sound, and attends school where there is continual background noise, yet Chance just plugs along and doesn't let his hearing loss hinder him from what he wants to do.

At one point during the hearing test, Chance plopped his shoe up on my lap.  I couldn't say anything since it was supposed to be quiet in the booth, so I just looked at him and shrugged.  He nodded back at me and I looked down to study his shoe and figure out what he was trying to get me to do.  One of the tongues of his shoes was twisted and needed to be pulled back up.  I adjusted that wayward tongue and then Chance smiled at me and took his foot down.  Apparently that was what I was supposed to do.

Who says you can't communicate in the sound booth and have fun?

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