Let the waiting begin...

With the completetion of Lily's sound booth testing last week and the receipt of the sedated testing results, all that is left now is waiting to hear news from the latest implant team meeting. I emailed Dr. Antonelli to ask him something I forgot to ask when we saw him last- what does Lily's cochlea look like, or rather, how many turns is she missing? A normal cochlea has 2.5 turns. Dr. Antonelli responded that Lily has between 1.5 and 2 turns in each cochlea, which is considered a mild deformity. I would be surprised if we hear something this next week since Thanksgiving is coming up, but I got the impression from him that we would hear something by the end of the month. I have been corresponding with a mom in New York who has a 2 year old son with Lily's exact level of loss and he was implanted in his severe-profound ear this past August. I am going to have to find out how she made this happen if UF turns us down. We have talked about going to Atlanta to try another implant center if UF says we need to wait until Lily loses more hearing in her left ear first. That would be rough since Atlanta is about 4-5 hours away, depending on how heavy your foot is. I would hope that they wouldn't want to do all of their own testing. It would be discouraging to have to start this process all over again. Hopefully, that won't even need to be a consideration.

I am going to try to get a chance to write about Lily's progress with AV therapy at some point this week. She really has made some remarkable progress since this summer. Right now, though, I need to be straightening up for tomorrow's therapy session here at home, bright and early at 9:00am!

-K