Appointment with Otolaryngologist

We met with the Otolaryngologist (Dr. Bauer) on Wednesday for the first of many times. In the event you did not know, an Otolaryngologist is an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor, one of many new things we are going to learn about. The appointment was not really so much about a diagnosis but rather talking about what we can expect from here. Dr. Bauer told us that this is most likely permanent and we have to see where to go from here. One of the things that the he ruled out is that this has nothing to do with ear infections and goes way beyond anything tubes could help with. His hearing loss is most likely due either an illness, genetics, or perhaps the hardware is simply not put together correctly. In any event we have an upcoming appointment with the audiologist again on November 13th to get another ABR test (Auditory Brainstem Response) test; this is the same test he received back in mid October that gave us this original news. The doctors want to see if they can get more information than what they received previously; this will all go to help diagnosis the underlying problem. We also have an appointment lined up with a Speech Therapist that we will likely be visiting once a week for quite some time. We are also going to have some genetic testing done to see if we can get more information as to the “Why”, this will also likely help with the diagnosis. In Feb/March timeframe we will have an MRI to see if his ears are developed properly or if that is part of the problem. In between all of this we are going to be getting some hearing aids to see if this may help, however it is likely it will not as the doctors feel this is more of getting him use to having something on his ear for the future. If it’s determined that a cochlear implant will benefit Jacob then we can look at doing this surgery at around one year of age. All of this is being done so that we can give Jacob the best chance at being able to hear, speak normally, and develop just as any other child his age. It is going to be far more difficult, time consuming, and challenging than we ever anticipated but Rebecca and would not trade this for anything.