Why don't my ears work?

Chance came out from his bed last night and wanted to know if water in his ears made it so he could not hear.

I thought we had covered why Chance is deaf but maybe it is a subject that we need to discuss several times as he grows up. That would be alright. We want him to feel like he can ask questions and understand what is going on with his hearing or lack thereof.

Of course Chance asked this question without implants on. He loves to do that.

"The hairs in your ears don't work." I told Chance.

He raised his eyelids. I drew out a cochlea, showed how there were hairs in side that help you hear, and told Chance that his hairs didn't work right.

I then told him that the implant passed the cochlea and sent the sounds and messages right to his brain. He was truly interested now.

At this point, his dad got in on the conversation and all of our kids materialized from their beds and gathered around the computer as we looked up a diagram of the human ear. I got out a book on the body and turned it to the pages about the ear while everyone looked on.

Chance was quite intrigued with this session on ears and how they work. The other kids were too.
Funny, we have done school assemblies on Chance's hearing loss. We have pointed out diagrams in doctors office of the ear and showed Chance where the implant is located. We even went to a hospital open house a few weeks before the implant surgeries where hospital staff showed Chance what would happen and he saw a close up of the cochlea. He even saw exactly where the drilling would be in his head and got to drill into a very real looking skull.

I think we may have this conversation many times about Chance's ears and his hearing loss. I think that is great. Chance should be comfortable about why he is deaf and how the implants work.

I think part of the reason Chance had questions is because he is learning about the body at school. Chance is showing a great interest in the human body. He asks questions about our skull, what the brain looks like and tells us where the biggest bone in the body is. He also wanted to know why our spines were not the biggest bone in the body since it was so long. We explained that the spine is actually made up of many little bones called vertebrae.

We have established that Chance does not get sick when watching medical procedures when he watched the fat from his own finger be cut off and wanted to watch the stitches go in.

Maybe we have a future doctor in the family. Perhaps Chance could be a surgeon that performs implants surgeries, his brother can be an audiologist and his sister can be a speech therapist. By the time they are grown, our kids will all have inside information on the above specialist having had many opportunities to visit their offices during their childhood:)