You know that we are considering second CI for Cory..it was more of yes than no..after reading and learning about BI-CI..and I have to admit, I'm little nervous for making a decision for him. But, there is lot of "what ifs"..so its better to do it now..FIRST more, the early intervention , the better...I don't want to wait and take chance with waiting for Cory to be old enough to make a decision himself. He might not fully understand at the time, and it would be harder for him to learn more speech when he get older. "What if"..he said to me "Mom, why didn't you go ahead with it when I was younger?" same way as some would say "why didn't I have hearing aids? or why didn't you do sign language (that in my case..) or why didn't you do etc?" I don't want to limit his choices, I want to give him all the choices he can ACCESS then he can grow and make choices of his own, rather than limit "all access of communication" and you know that the eariler the better. So if I do one way..and maybe it doesn't work..then you "wasted" a year or so of his life trying that way. Then you have a lot to catch up or it's harder to be successful in sense it could "have been" etc? So our approach may be different than most people who are choosing to chose ONE way of communication method, then they would wait and see if it does work or doesn't. I rather just give it all and exposes all access of communication just so he have the full potentials. Same with our decision, by getting a second CI.. if he doesn't want to use it, then he can take it off himself. No pressures. I feel better knowing that we gave him the option rather than he ask us later why we didn't?
Then just other night, I feel stronger than ever with our decision. One incident that happened during a family Christmas dinner. Sean sat on the left side, with Cory in the middle and I'm on the right. (The CI is on the right side). Sean encouraged Cory to say the word "Thank you"..Cory would try to feel Sean's voice by pressing his hand on his throat then Cory turned his head all the way around to "hear" Sean's voice. I 'm like astonished by this..he is trying to hear him but the CI was on the other side!!!! So Cory's ability and showed us how its important to have that balance, he needs it on the other side!!!! This got me curious, and was eager to see how he reacts by "the wrong" side of sound stimulations. Sure enough, he has been turning and looking around to see where it came from and tilted his head around to follow it. He does respond fully by the right side, directly the sounds coming from the "right" side. But with sounds coming from left, he's not. I am noticing that NOW. WOW Another thing, I realized now that he has been sitting on the WRONG side of the car seat, thus, he hasn't really responding to me at times. But unfortuanately, I have to stay on the driver side and he has to stay the opposite side so we both can see each other visually. But not "auditory" as he hasn't responding up to prior. I thought maybe its because of the motor noise, traffic noise etc...INTERESTING huh????
ADOPTING A DEAF BOY, OUR JOURNEY & EXPERIENCES WITH COCHLEAR IMPLANTS.
I know what you mean about the localization of sounds. It's almost sad for me to watch Kristen at one end of the house spinning looking for where I am. She will even walk the other way to check the kitchen first. I am going to get her a new ear mold made this week and still try and push for the second implant. It's just so frustrating when someone else makes the choices for you and you can't make them for yourself!
ReplyDelete