Audiology

So the second band of merry wanderers have been through and back again, and they were a pleasure to have around, as always. Now they're gone and it's all drudgery here. Sigh. But this post is about A's hearing.

As part of any normal speech assessment, they want to do a hearing test (because if you can't hear or hear clearly, you may not talk). Way back in August when all of this assessment stuff started, the First Five people told me that it would take forever to get the state to do a hearing test and that it would be more expedient to pursue a hearing test through our private insurance. At A's two-year checkup the first week of August, his doctor wrote him a prescription for an audiology referral.

That test was originally scheduled for December, the day he had his massive asthma attack and was almost hospitalized. I called in the day before (when he was just coughing and not yet limp) and left a message canceling it. There's no way to talk to a human; they promise to return your call in one business day.

They rescheduled him for today. Three months later! Unbelievable. I know it's unbelievable, because the next time he was sick for an assessment appointment, I marched him down there, let him cough all over their office, and then asked them to reschedule. That time I got an appointment two weeks later and the supervisor's personal line to call with any problems. I should have asked for the audiology to be rescheduled then, but I didn't. So we're having the test seven months after I requested it. Argh.

An audiology test for a toddler works like this: they put tiny tubes in his ears to transmit the tones. Then he sits on my lap in a controlled room where there are shadowboxes containing animatronic animals which light up at various times. Through the tubes, the tester asks him to point to where he hears the tone. I assume the animals light to make sure he's responding to the tone and not just stimuli in the room. Also, they keep it interesting. He was pretty bored by the end of this.

Then they did two separate tests to show how his eardrum and inner ears are responding to sound. His right eardrum was not as responsive as it should have been. The tester looked in his ears and said the right one looked red.

So the audiology tests were inconclusive. The tests could show some minor to moderate hearing loss, but his eardrum looked bad and he's had a cold. The audiologist refused to make a diagnosis based on these tests. She said we should get him to the doctor, get his ear issues cleared up, and then do the audiology exam again in four to six weeks.

I'm not sure what to think. He doesn't seem to have any hearing loss to me, but I'm not an audiologist. There are members of our family who have hearing loss (and not just the ones who were on carriers) so it's a real possibility. I liked the audiologist; she seemed to know what she was doing and half-way through our assessment, another audiologist pulled her in for a consult, so they think she knows what she's doing too. Happily, there's nothing I can do either way but take him to the doctor tomorrow and have his ears checked.

The worst part is that he had a fever on Tuesday and couldn't go to preschool. No preschool at all this week for him--poor boy, poor mommy.