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Monday, September 26, 2016

Hearing loss......again.

Chance's brother Ammon is experiencing more hearing loss.  We thought we had gotten a grip on the falling hearing loss that hit him about 2 years ago. We got the implant in one ear and just bought a new hearing aid for the other ear a few weeks ago. 
 It turns out that whatever causes the hearing loss is back. When we went in for our audiological appointment a few weeks ago, I told the audiologist that Ammon has been asking me "what" much more often lately and that he didn't seem to be hearing as well. The first thing they checked was his implant. His implant seemed to be working just fine and when we went into the hearing booth, Ammon heard well.
Then they had Ammon take his implant off and just use his hearing aid in the hearing booth. Ammon likes me to be in the booth with him when he has hearing tests so I am almost always there when they test his hearing. It is always a bit interesting for me when I am sitting in the booth listening and hearing the sentences and words coming from the audiologist through a speaker and then realizing that while I am hearing what is being said, my son is not.  At one point during this last appointment, Ammon turned to me in the booth and shrugged because he had no guesses as to what was being said. I could hear everything. I always have to put on a poker face and give no indication  if what Ammon repeats after the words or sentences is correct or incorrect. My heart sinks a little when I realize that he is not hearing what is being said or seems to be hearing less than he did before.

The loss is in Ammon's hearing aid side explains why he has been asking me what more often lately.  It is true that he has an implant, but Ammon really likes that hearing aided ear. When he first got the implant, he would turn his head so that his hearing aid was facing me if we were in a noisy environment. I think he really feels the loss of hearing in that ear. The audiologist says that Ammon is truly a bilateral kid, relying on both ears to hear.
Ammon doesn't really complain about his hearing loss or things related to it. The day before we went in to see the audiologist, Ammon mentioned that he is dizzy most of the time and that only when he is playing does he not notice it as much. I think playing with friends distracts him enough so that he doesn't feel it as much, but when he is trying to do school work, or is just sitting quietly, he notices that the dizziness is there.  At the audiologists office, Ammon also mentioned that along with dizziness, he gets headaches too. He didn't tell us this stuff was going on, and when he did mention the dizziness, I was glad that we were going in to see the audiologists because if Ammon mentioned it, that means that it really must be impacting him.
So, here we go on the journey again.  The audiologist says he thinks the hearing will just continue to fall just like his other ear did.  Ammon is already in cochlear implant range as far as hearing, but our audiologist says that we should keep the hearing aid as long as it will work because there are advantages that come with having both kinds of hearing.  So we will watch and see what happens now.  We got the hearing aid programmed to match the new loss.  We are keeping an eye on the hearing and will go back to the audiologist in the next few months to check the hearing again.  Sooner if we need to.
Right now, we just wait and see what happens. Whatever is causing the hearing loss is back again and no one knows why it is happening. We are buckling up for the journey again.  We don't know where exactly we will end up, but we know that if the hearing continues to fall, there will most likely be another cochlear implant in our future.


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