Today was Kylie's 6 month post activation testing. Kylie walked into University of Miami with her typical smile on her face, alerting the doctors she was ready and this was going to be easy. We got into the booth and the testing started. Kylie was breezing through it. What we didn't realize is that even though we had taken the right CI off, Kylie when we weren't watching put it back on. Let's restart the tests again.
Kylie was given sentences to repeat such as:
He drew a mustache on his sister's picture (No - I am not making this up)
She was given a list of 50 words to repeat back. Some if they were a past spelling word she felt necessary to not only repeat it but to spell it too. (A little overachiever)
She was also given sounds to alert when she heard at various levels.
The outcome... Kylie is doing phenomenal with the left CI and is at normal range for hearing in all but two frequencies. She is way ahead of where she was at this point with the right CI. AMAZING results. Plus, while we were there they tweaked the programming for her left CI to give her better access to sounds on those two frequencies.
Testing was then done with both CIs and she successfully repeated 47 out of 50 words. Missing those, that and thick. The observation was made that with her missing her two front teeth the th blend was hard to produce. Try it.. say that, where do you place your tongue to produce the sound? Imagine if you didn't have teeth. I'll take it. To put this in perspective, before the CIs Kylie could repeat maybe 15 out of 50 words, on a good day!
I have said it a million times and I will never stop saying it, we are truly blessed by the amazing technology that is out there to assist Kylie with her disability. Odd, I don't think I have ever called it a disability before as there is nothing stopping this girl. Being deaf and hard of hearing has only made her that much stronger!
Take a look at this blog post and old video in 2011 when Kylie got her first hearing aids so much time has passed!
http://livinglavidalum.blogspot.com/2011/12/kylies-new-hearing-aids.html
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