Wednesday 15 August 2012

Wombat's hearing test

So, you want to take a guess at why I've been MIA lately? Yep, uni. I can't promise it won't happen again between now and mid-October when I'll have finished my exams and my second (!) year of uni. Doing three subjects a term while working full time and looking after two young children doesn't leave me with much spare time for blogging.

In saying that, I do still check my RSS feed every day and read all my favourite blogs. I was reading a post by Tara at Our Whirlwind Adventures last week about how Master S had hearing difficulties, and it made me think a lot about our own situation with Wombat.

I mentioned back in March that we had taken Wombat to a speech pathologist because he wasn't talking much. We did the exercises with Wombat that the speech pathologist had recommended. For a while, he seemed to be making more of an effort to talk. When the speech pathologist rang after a month to see how we were going, I told her that I felt that we were making some progress. We organised for her to call again and check up on us in three months time.

Fast forward to three months later, and I mentioned in the follow-up call that Wombat was speaking more, but he still wasn't speaking as much as I thought he should be for his age. We organised a review appointment, which took place a few weeks ago.

As Wombat and Seagull were both in child care, Thunder Maker and I picked both of them up to take to the appointment. Seagull tried to take over and make it all about him. Wombat started majorly beating the shit out of Seagull. Seagull and Thunder Maker were ejected from the building so the speech pathologist could interact with Wombat uninterrupted. We agreed that as useful as it was for her to see the interaction between the two of them, Seagull would be kept well away from any further appointments.

It was mentioned at our initial appointment back in March that it would be worth getting Wombat's hearing checked, just to make sure it was OK. We were a bit short on funds at the time and Thunder Maker said that we didn't need to have Wombat's hearing checked, as he responds to us asking him to do things all the time. Me explaining that a child with glue ear still has some level of hearing fell on deaf ears. Yeah, I went there.

Anyway, after our last speech pathology appointment, I put my foot down and said that we really needed to get Wombat's hearing checked. I went ahead and made the appointment. Wombat had that appointment this afternoon.

Thunder Maker took Wombat to the appointment. When I got home from work, Thunder Maker said that Wombat's test had revealed that he has significant hearing loss. They weren't able to complete the pressure test, as Wombat wouldn't hold his head still, but the audiologists said that the fact that Wombat has been a mobile snot factory since he was about 8 months old probably means that he has quite a bit of fluid in his ears.

The audiologists are apparently going to forward the report to our GP, so we need to make an appointment with her to get a referral to an ENT specialist.

I know this sounds horrible, but I'm glad Wombat has something wrong with his hearing. At least now we have a reason for why he doesn't talk much, and we can get it fixed.