Today was Baby K's appointment with the ENT. We have been waiting anxiously for a month since his hearing loss diagnosis for this appointment. I must say I was a little disappointed. Everything we discussed I already knew because I researched it and was told the same info from all the other doctors we had seen. We waited a month for them to tell us that he will need to get fitted for hearing aids (between 3-6months), then if they don't work start looking towards getting him cochlear implants. So now we have to make another appointment to get him to get the hearing aids. We could have saved a trip to the ENT and just gone to get fitted for the hearing aids since all he did was look in his ears for two seconds! From what I have learned about the implants is that the sooner they are implanted the better (In Texas 12 months is about the earliest) but hearing aids, a lot of testing, and insurance clearance needs to be done first. So if he needs hearing aids then let us get started on the process of getting them now, not when he is six months old. If he needs a MRI then we need to start ordering it now. I say get started now because I work in the medical field I know how long things take, and if we have to wait a month in between every appointment he may not be able to get his implants by the time he is 12 months old. I told the ENT how I felt about all of this and he immediately started working on getting us in for the hearing aids and the MRI, he was even able to get Baby K in to get his genetic testing done today. They drew his blood to test for the flawed Connexin 26 gene that is associated with hearing loss. We should have those results in a few weeks. Finally I feel like we are getting somewhere!
Such a brave boy! He even had a smile on his face after being poked for blood on his little arm.
