Appointment with Dr. Choo

Today we had a follow-up with Dr. Choo regarding Ben's cochlear implant. He was very reassuring and helpful. He said that what we are experiencing with Ben and his implant is very typical with the kids he sees that have a lot of other issues in addition to hearing loss. He reminded us to be patient, work with him a lot and just give him time. He basically said that these kiddos have gone so long without sound that it is a real adjustment to train their brains to let the sound in. Kids that have nothing else wrong but hearing loss are definitely quicker at this adjustment, but kids like Ben can take quite a while. He said letting the sound in is the first step. The second step is consistently detecting sounds. The third is making sense out of them (like knowing that was just the phone that rang). And the forth is understanding speech. He said by 24 months of age (that's typical child age... not someone like Ben), kids develop a much longer attention span and they are more accepting to listening. So, we are hopeful and much more positive that this will come with time. We just have to remind ourselves that Ben is on his own time table - not ours.