Today, Tehilla went for a hearing test. It was something necessary to check into with a speech disorder such as Apraxia. The appointment started off with me giving Tehilla's medical history. That always forces some raised eyebrows and jaw dropping. I explained that Tehilla was born with half a heart, and the woman stopped me and said, "What? No, that doesn't make sense. What do you mean?" So I explained that Tehilla was born with half a heart, and it's a condition called HLHS and she's had 3 heart surgeries to reconstruct her heart. Some heart awareness was made and the woman couldn't stop staring at Tehilla. I ran through the rest of her medical history.
Tehilla was not cooperative. She wouldn't stay on my lap in their hearing lab and they had to accommodate her demands to sit on a little kid chair. At one point, she wanted to play with the technician and kept showing her a ball and saying, "Ball!" over and over and got frustrated when she wouldn't respond. She ignored purposefully or not (?) many of the sounds. When the technician said "No!" to her when she stood up and walked away, Tehilla burst into tears. I had to advocate a bit and have them do things a bit differently to get Tehilla to cooperate.
In the end, they felt that overall her hearing was fine, but since she was uncooperative, they couldn't fully assess her. They felt that she should be "under observation" until an older age, where she can get a full assessment done. Their reasoning was because it's Tehilla. They want her to come back when she is two and a half.
Nice post!!
ReplyDeleteJust as we get our eyes tested and teeth checked regularly, taking good care of our hearing is no less important. If a check-up shows that you do have hearing difficulty, you can sort it out sooner rather than later and start to enjoy life to the full once again.hearing test