Chance goes on a canoe trip

Chance would be the best person to talk about how his canoe trip went.  He is going to tell us all about it on this blog in a few days too.

For now, I will share what I have heard about this once in a lifetime trip.  Chance and his scout troop headed down to the southern end of our state to canoe for 70 miles through some of the most beautiful country that God has to offer.

There were 26 people in total, 9 leaders and 17 boys.  They were matched into groups of two to share a canoe and then they spend the next three days bonding as they glided, and fought rapids down the river.  The rapids were a bit of a surprise and I have to give all of those males credit for taking on rapids in a canoe.

Chance's partner was his dad since he was on the trip as a leader.  This was a handy situation for Chance since he could do things like hand his implant to his canoe mate when he wanted to jump into the river and take a swim.  I said implant because Chance used only one implant for much of the trip. He had the two kinds of water protectors for his implants and he really preferred one over the other, but he only had one of those.  His favorite was the more expensive option. Naturally.  Kids always like the more expensive model right?:)

Obviously there were some precautions taken so that Chance's implant did not take off into the river on it's own during brawls with rapids or when there were strenuous moment trying to get the canoe to shore against the current to camp.

I do know that Chance's implant ran out of battery power about half hour before the group got to the part of the river where they got out.  Chance's dad asked him if that bothered him, and Chance said no.  Chance's dad then asked if he liked floating down the river in silence and Chance nodded that he did. I can imagine that the ability to silently take in all of the beauty and majesty of the scenery must have been an almost reverent experience for Chance.

I will blog more about what I know about this canoe trip that Chance will remember forever, but I want to give him an opportunity to share his experience first.

In the meantime, here are some stock photos (thanks google search) of the area where they were at:

A second time around

I started this blog to talk about Chance and his journey to hear through his deafness.  Last month Chance had a routine mapping appointment that had been scheduled for months.  His appointment just happened to fall on a day that I would be attending Women's Conference with friends. So my brave husband took most of our kids to the appointment himself.

I was sitting at Women's Conference listening to a speaker when a text came through on my cell phone. Normally I wouldn't pay attention to my phone during a class, but my cell phone was in my hand as I was getting something out of my bag.  When I realized that it was my hubby, I looked to see what he said because I knew he wouldn't text me at Women's Conference unless it was important.  This is what I read:

"Our son is measuring at a moderate to severe hearing loss."

Now, Chance has a hearing loss of course, but this text wasn't about Chance.  It was about one of my other kids.

I just sat there staring at the screen.

Then I texted back something profound like, "Wow."

Then I didn't hear from my husband again.  So when class was over, I tried to call him.  He didn't answer.

You can't just text a mother and tell her that her son has hearing loss and then not answer the phone!

Actually, the logical part of my brain knew what was happening at that moment where my husband was in the audiologists office.  I have been to many such appointments in my lifetime.  I knew the audiologist was running my son through the sounds again or he was talking to my husband about the results of the hearing test.

I texted my husband with, "I know that you are busy but I am dying here call me when you can."

He texted back with "Sorry, I will call you in a minute."

We didn't have texting like this when Chance was diagnosed 11 years ago.

I then went to my next class and started making a fairy wand as part of a humanitarian project.  I have to admit that I was a little distracted and I needed to be able to focus on the instructions for making that fairy wand since I am not a natural at sewing.  Luckily,  there were some women at my table making the same fairy wands so I watched what they were doing and followed.

My phone started to ring, and I dashed out of the room to catch the call.

I had lots of questions like, "NOW WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE?  WASN'T THIS CHANCE'S APPOINTMENT?" Along with:

"Do both ears have a loss?"

"How big of a loss are we talking about again?"

"Will he need hearing aids?"

"Why do they think he has a loss?"

"How is our son taking it?"

"What happened there........how did one of our other kids get into the hearing booth?"

My husband opened up with the whole story.  Our youngest son has been telling us that he can not hear as well out of his left ear.  I actually had made a note to myself to call the school district to have him tested.  Chance's dad just asked the audiologist at the implant appointment if he could test our other son as he had mentioned that he was not hearing as well out of his left ear.

Turns out there was a reason he hasn't been hearing as well out of that ear.

As our son sat in the booth having his hearing tested, my husband was sitting behind the audiologist watching him mark down the results.  Since we are people that are quite familiar with audiograms, my husband knew right away that the left ear had developed some issues.  The left ear was testing at a moderate loss.  Since that initial appointment when the hearing loss was discovered,  the loss has continued to fall.  The fall has been like this:

First visit the loss in the left ear was 50-55db across 500-4000 Hz, dropping to 70-80db in both ears at 6000 and 8000 Hz.  His right ear was between 0 and 10 except for the 6000+Hz range.

Two weeks later his left ear had dropped about 10db across the board, to about 60db up to 4000Hz, then 80 to 90db in both ears at 6000-8000Hz.  His right ear also dropped - now sitting at about 20db loss except for the dive in the 6000+ Hz range.

Another two weeks later showed another 10db loss:  Left ear hitting up to 70 db in some frequencies, and the upper ranges are now 85-90 db.  The right ear now sits at 25-30 db across the board, then 80-85 db at 6000+ Hz.

So, we are in the process of getting MRI's done, seeing doctors and having hearing tests.  We are trying to figure out what is happening to our son's hearing.  The first MRI didn't give us any information, so we had another one done a few days ago that went more in depth. That MRI didn't reveal any reason for the loss either.  We will meet with doctors at a hearing clinic in July to see if they have any ideas about why the hearing is dropping and if there is anything that we can do about it.  Our son went on a round of steroids but his hearing loss continued.

For now, we have a hearing aid on his left ear, and we are watching the right ear.  We have another hearing test scheduled in July and we will see where the loss falls then.

It is like deja-vu.  We have gone through this with hearing loss before.  The difference is, when we found out that Chance had hearing loss, he was already deaf, whether the loss happened all at once or dropped over time, we don't know.  Right now, we are watching a loss that just continues to drop every couple of weeks.  With Chance we didn't watch his hearing drop.

I still have some of the original questions that I had when we started and hopefully we'll find some answers.

Now we have both implants and hearing aids in the house, something we've have never had before.  We are becoming reacquainted with hearing aids again.  They can't get wet at all.  Condensation can build up in the tube leading into the mold and then you need to suction it out.

One person with hearing loss in our house wears their hearing device all day only taking it off to sleep and shower.  The other person with a hearing device takes their device off at times and has to be reminded to put it back on.  I'll let you guess who is who:)

We Love the Caption Phone

Chance and I love the caption phone.  Chance loves it because he can read what is being said and it makes it easier for him to understand when people call.

Chance has a CaptionCall phone like this

I  love it because I get to capture little gems of conversation like you will see below.

Let me set the scene.  Chance gets a call from his cousin who is the other pea in his pod.  I am watching this scroll down the screen as they talk:

"Chance, do you have a pass to the water park?  Because guess what?  My mom said maybe you can come with us. Um, I will call you about the details again.  It is going to be Monday or Wednesday and it is probably going to be an all day thing and my parents say we can go off on our own.
And we can flirt with girls, heck ya!  You like that sound?"

Gee, it is so hard to figure out what is going through the minds of teenagers these days when you have a caption phone.

It is a little like being a spy.  Only you don't have to have any special sort of skill to figure out what is going down.

Chance's doesn't know yet that his aunt invited me to join them at the water park this week.   So that means Chance will have his mom there too.  I wonder if that will impact the flirting.  I hope so:)

Aqua accessories to the rescue!

I should probably talk about what the "dohickies" are that I mentioned in my last post.  The "dohickies" are actually the aqua accessory by Cochlear Ltd.   We (well OK, Chance), are also using the aqua+.  What are these aqua things you may wonder.  

The aqua accessory is an envelope that fits around the implant.  The entire implant goes into an implant ziploc-type bag.  This protects the implant from water.  Each envelope can be used once. 

courtesy of http://mycochlearimplantjourney.wordpress.com

The aqua+ is a new coil and a sleeve that goes over the whole processor.  You can use this sleeve 50 times. (each kit has two sleeves, so good for about 100 uses).   It does cost (significantly) more up front, so we bought one to test it out - one kit works for one implant, so if you want to use it for bilaterals, it means buying two kits.

Rather than coming soon, this is actually here now!

Chance will have much to report on both aqua products in the next few weeks as his job as an official assistant swim instructor starts tomorrow.  Luckily, Chance has some siblings that will be attending swim lessons during part of the summer so I can take pictures of Chance's siblings.  And Chance on the job:)  They will all be in the same pool, I may as well just get pictures of everyone.  I see a swimming scrapbook page in our future. 

Chance is really excited about this job.  He did training for a few hours on Saturday, and tomorrow the actual kids arrive for lessons.  Each swim session lasts for two weeks.  Every two weeks a new group of kids will arrive to learn to swim.  Chance could be teaching anyone to swim from babies (with their parents) to older kids learning to dive.  The classes he helps to teach will vary according to need. 

Chance will get up at the crack of dawn (or before) for swim team., then stay at the pool to teach lessons all morning.  We will need to stock up on sunscreen.  Chance is not tan.  Not even a little bit.  He has an awesome stingray swim shirt that he inherited from his older brother though, so that should help with sun protection.

On a side note, Chance asked me if taxes would be taken out before he got his paycheck.  I assured him that the government would make sure that they got their share before Chance even sees money in any form from a job.  I didn't quite say it like that, but I did assure him that all taxes would be taken out before he received any sort of payment. 

 

The job

Chance had his first training for his new job.  He will be a teacher's aid and help with swimming lessons at our local pool.

That's right, Chance who wears implants, will be spending his mornings in a pool.  Filled with water and splashing children.  Teaching children how to swim.  Chance doesn't see any boundaries to what he can do with implants and I go with him on that.  That boy can do anything he wants.

Chance's implants can take some water, but we also got him these snazzy little dohickies that fit over his implants to help protect them.  Chance will be in the pool, helping a teacher teach little kids to swim.  Some of these little kids did not come up with the idea to learn to swim on their own and are being forced to learn by their parents.  They will cry, kick, hit the water with their hands and otherwise do all sorts of things that could get implants wet.

Little dohickies

Come to think of it, Chance first learned to swim against his will, and he cried, kicked and hit the water with his hands, all while looking at me in despair and holding out his arms to me.  But Chance had to learn to swim.  Chance out of all of my children, would be able to hear me the least when we were around any kind of water.  He needed to know how to swim at least a little and not just sink like a log to the bottom of a pool.  It was a hard go, I must admit.  Chance didn't want to learn to swim at first.  Heck, he didn't even want to be in the water with his teacher.  So guess what happened?  The teacher's aid would work with Chance and help him by gently having him do what the rest of the class was doing.  She knew he was deaf, and she worked with him by demonstrating what he needed to do.

It was rather heartbreaking as Chance called out to me during swimming lessons

Now Chance will come full circle and help other hapless children who are in swim lessons against their will.  Some of the kids love swim lessons and look forward to it every day.  Chance got to the point where he loved swim lessons and looked forward to them.  It didn't happen that first year though.

I am so excited for Chance.  He is really good at working with kids and he genuinely likes them and they like him back.  I think he will do a great job and the kids will love him.  AND, we get to try out these little dohickies on Chance' implants.  He is really excited about using them.  His dream is to swim underwater and hear what the rest of us hear and see what it is like to have sound when he is swimming.

The season is over

Chance's soccer team took 4th place in the state.  Each game this week was a nail bitter and two of the games went into over time.  One game went into double over time and ended with the kick offs.  Chance's team won that one.  It was intense, and all week was like that.  Each game came down to the last minute.

One of the highlights, was when Chance kicked the assist to his best friend and then his friend made his first goal ever in a game.  It was like they knew what the other one was thinking.

They didn't loose any games until the 3rd day, and then they lost the 4th day as well, with a goal made by the other team just as the buzzer blew.

I am telling you, watching the games was incredible and there was never a dull moment.  The team is so close and they will remember this year in soccer forever. Their coach said they are the best team she has ever had. I wonder if she still feels that way since Chance arranged for a 5 gallon bucket of water to be poured over her head when the season was over:)

CHANCE GOT A JOB!!

He starts training later today and I will give a full report.  He is so excited. There were many kids that applied for this job and only 5 slots.  CHANCE WAS ONE OF THOSE 5! YIPPEE!

I will write more about Chance's job when he gets home and tells me how it went:)

Chance's team is ready to rumble

Chance's school soccer team has played well this year.  So well that they are ranked 2nd and will have tournament games all week this week.  They will have the home team advantage too since all of the games will be played at their school (until the final, assuming the 1-seed wins to that point too).

Chance's school has amazing school spirit and several teachers and parents are always found in the crowd cheering the kids on.

Chance has some amazing friends on the soccer team and they are a tight group that have each others' backs.

There is a wall at school marking each goal that has been made by the team this year and the name of the player who made the goal, along with the names of the assists, where appropriate (and remembered). Chance's name is listed on some of those papers and he has had a great season. His coaches said that he was one of the best conditioned on the team.  That made Chance very happy.  He can now kick well with his left foot as well as his right foot which he is quite excited about.

Chance's county soccer league just ended for the season and will pick up again in the fall.  As soon as the school soccer season ends, Chance will begin swim team and be getting up at 6:15 each morning to swim. There is no such thing as sleeping in for Chance through the summer.  But that is okay, he loves to swim. and stay active.

Go Chance Go!

Where are all the other players

Get the ball Chance! Chance is in the orange and yellow cleats

We are all excited for the tournament this week and wish the team all the best! Go team!

Being deaf helps keep brotherely relatioships intact

Chance and his older brother share a bedroom.  They are great buddies most of the time and have each other's back.

Chance being deaf has really helped the relationship stay on track since his brother has a habit that would drive people who can hear all through the night to the brink of madness.

With all of the technology available in this day and age, Chance's brother has yet to master the option to put music on a timer at night as you go to sleep.  Instead of music playing for 10 or 20 minutes while drifting off to sleep, Chance's brother's music sometimes PLAYS ALL NIGHT LONG.  It is still playing in the morning when he gets up for school.

This may explain why he is so tired some mornings.  We should schedule a discussion about the repercussions of ,making your brain listen to music all night long.

This glitch in Chance's brother's habits though, does not sour their relationship in the least because CHANCE CAN NOT HEAR THE MUSIC PLAYING ALL NIGHT LONG.  He just blissfully sleeps in that comatose world he enters at night where nothing disturbs him.  Except for us if we need to move him or wake him up prematurely.  Even in those moments I think we are more disturbed than he is as we shake him, lift up his arm, or manually try to lift him as he continues to sleep on.
If there is ever an emergency in the middle of the night and we have to evacuate the house,  it is not out of the realm of possibilities that two of us will be half carrying Chance out the door as he still sleeps. Forget the idea of fleeing with provisions ahead of a flood etc. we will be fleeing holding onto Chance.

I wonder how hard it is for his friends to wake him up at scout camp. I am going to start asking questions.

Yes, Chance and his brother are close and have each other's back,  and no music playing through the wee hours of the morning can change that.

The amputation rumor

It turns out that Chance's good friend who hurt his knee, didn't really hurt his knee.  He took a family trip to China and missed April Fool's Day, so he decided to play a trick when he got back.  He came to school using crutches and everything. Chance was not at school though, so he did not know any of this.

Chance decided to play a joke on his friend who he thought had a hurt his knee and sent a text telling him that the doctor had said Chance's leg would have to be amputated from above the knee.  Chance's friend never texted back, so Chance did not have an opportunity to respond that he was kidding,

When I checked Chance into school the next day, his first class was history which just happens to have his friend who didn't respond to the text in it and is taught by one of Chance's soccer coaches.

Chance said that when he walked into class, a little late as he was hobbling around the school on crutches, he said his teacher/coach looked like she was in pain when she saw him.

His teacher along with a few other people, thought that Chance was going to loose his leg.

Chance felt bad.  He had never meant for the text to spread.(there is a lesson in this situation somewhere).

After everything was cleared up and everyone understood that Chance's friend had never really hurt his knee at all, and Chance was not going to need an amputation, the soccer coach/history teacher had a talk with the soccer team.

She explained that April Fool's Day was on April 1st and did not last for the entire month.  She then told the team that they could trick on the official holiday for fooling people, but that was it.

That poor teacher.  She just loves Chance and spent an entire day and a half thinking that he was going to loose his leg.  She was also his teacher when his implant failed and she was thinking that poor Chance had been asked to endure many physical challenges in this life.

Chance is fine.  His friend is fine.  The teacher is fine now.  I think the moral of this story is, you never know how far and wide a text you send will travel, so keep that in mind when you press the send button:)

Chance wounds his knee

This past week was spring break and Chance had a really good time not going to school and hanging out with cousins.

He also started to learn some new long boarding tricks.  Just as he was in the middle of doing that, he fell and whammed his  knee.  Really hard.  His knee had a nice big raspberry wound on the side and was a little swollen.  We put a band-aid on it and Chance left with his cousins to make his own long board since his cousins work for a guy that makes them.

When I picked Chance up several hours later, he was grinning from ear to ear holding up his own custom made long board.  While still smiling, Chance said,"Hey mom!  Check at my knee!"

His knee was HUGE.

Chance's uncle is a physicians assistant so he felt around the knee and wrapped it in an ace bandage telling Chance to ice it.  Then we left for our 10 hour drive home.

This morning, two days later, Chance's knee was still huge so I took him in to see the doctor.  On the way to the doctor's office, Chance informed me that he really hates needles and would rather ride a shark than get poked with a needle.  I wonder how he really feels.

Once the doctor took a look at Chance's knee, he told us that Chance's knee was filled with a lot of blood and gave us two options:  keep a wrap on the knee, ice it regularly and let his body absorb the blood,  OR he could poke a needle into Chance's knee and drain out the blood.

I chose the needle option.  It would help the knee heal faster.  Chance told me that he needed to get back to the soccer field as soon as possible as he has three games this week.  I realized that Chance would most likely not make any of his games this week, but draining the blood would help the knee heal faster it seemed.

The doctor thought this was the best option as well, and he proceeded to pull out a HUGE needle.  Chance looked concerned.  The doctor told him that he would numb the skin first and that would feel like a bumble bee sting.  Chance sighed and lay down on the exam table and started to play a game on an iPod to distract himself.

The doctor told him not to move, that was very important, but that if things started to hurt, Chance could call out and he would adjust  things.

Some of Chance's siblings were with us, and it took a moment for me to convince them that they could not look on at the proceedings with  looks of horror on their faces with their hands over their mouths like they were doing when the process started.  We all had to be strong for Chance.

I stood with my hand on Chance's shoulder for moral support and distracted the other kids with games of tic tac toe.

Things did hurt, and Chance told the doctor twice that he was feeling pain in his knee. After only a few minutes, Chance's knee was visibly smaller and the HUGE vile attached to the needle was full of Chance's blood.  At this point, Chance was calm and started asking questions about what would be done with his blood now. The doctor gave him a brief explanation and sent us home.  He said that if Chance's knee filled with blood again tomorrow, we would need to check for other issues.  Chance was instructed to elevate his knee, ice it several times today, and stay off of it.  That meant he would not be going back to school.  Chance took that news quite well.  He will be resting his knee tomorrow as well.

This afternoon, we got a call from the doctor's office.  When the doctor sat down later in the day to finish the notes on Chance's file, he started to feel that it would be a good idea to get an x-ray since so much blood had been taken out of the knee to check for other problems.

The x-ray came back and things looked good.  Chance and I looked at the x-ray with the doctor and he pointed out that the knee looked normal with no fractures etc. The doctor pointed out  Chance's growth plates and said that he would be getting taller.  Chance was delighted to hear this news.  He is already getting tall, but taller is even better.

Luckily for Chance, I emailed all of his teachers so his brother could pick up all assignments and homework he was missing:)

As far as soccer goes, the soccer coach at school is having a challenging week.  Chance's position on the team is left wing and his good friend plays left wing as well.   As luck would have it, Chance's friend hurt his knee on spring break too so he is on crutches.  Today at school Chance's friend was nice enough to share one of his crutches with Chance, until I picked him up for his appointment halfway through the day. When Chance was called down to the office where I was waiting, it was lunch time and he was all smiles limping along with the help of one crutch.
The soccer team will be minus two left wing players this week.   Chance should be ready to play again next week. I don't know about his friend.  I did tell Chance though,that if his friend ends up needing to stay home from school tomorrow, that he can come over here and they can play card games together as they elevate and ice their knees.