The Implant

I would say the "equipment" necessary for Dallas to "hear," has been our biggest challenge over the last 3 weeks.  If there was a magical way to keep everything "ON" him, that would be wonderful.  It falls off 50 times a day.  It has added another component to everyday life and it is taking some getting used to for everyone. 

It's not only a challenging transition for us, but more so for Dallas.  It's a whole new world for him and he has to learn how to listen and respond to sound.  The first step has been teaching him to "detect" sound and then respond.  We have been learning ways to encourage a response by making it rewarding and exciting for him.  It is not as easy as many would think....this will absolutely be a process.  We have made the decision to go cochlear (as I have been calling it) and do not regret it, it's just far more involved than we ever could have known until we are incorporating into our daily life.  Both school staff and hearing team at the U of M seem to be encouraged by how Dallas is handling everything so far.  He has been through 10 different programs and many volume increases and so far he has been tolerating it all without a fuss.  He has his first round of official sound booth testing this Wednesday.  They will simply sit him in a chair in the middle of the room and present sounds to see how he responds.

This is the device pictured above.  The round piece is attached via the magnet that was placed under his skin.  The ear piece is the processor, and the portion clipped on his shirt is the battery.  The sound goes into the microphones on the processor, processes the sound and sends it to Dallas's brain through the piece attached via the magnet.  Technology is amazing.

"Exciting" Morning

Dallas, Dakota, and I were watching cartoons and playing in the living room this morning when I noticed Dallas's entire g-tube laying on the floor.  Yikes!  He pulled it out.  It was 7:30 am and by the time we got into the ER and had it replaced it had almost been 2 hours.  They had a little difficulty getting it in, but all went relatively smoothly.  There was a dye test conducted at the end to make sure the tube was in the right place, which it was, however, there is now speculation that his intestine is malrotated.  The Upper GI study done when he was born showed no indication of intestinal issues, and since this is a condition you are generally born with, we are scheduled to have a repeat Upper GI this Friday morning to confirm/deny the diagnosis.  If his intestine is in fact malrotated, he would have to have something called a Ladd procedure to correct the problem, but we are not going down that road until after the test on Friday.