3.13.10

We spent yesterday afternoon at the surgery center with Aimee. She was put under anesthesia for about 2.5 hours while they checked out her hearing abilities. Always a nerve racking experience! Aimee did really well, aside from trying to get away from the dreaded mask with the "magic air". Also, we had the same anesthesiologist as we did for the Brain MRI. Aimee has difficult veins to get an IV into and thankfully this doctor had made a note as to which vein had ended up working for the MRI. So she was only attacked once with the needle!

After the procedure, we met with the doctor while Aimee was coming to. A lot of the information went over our heads, but the gist of it was that Aimee does have a delay between the time that sounds enter her ear and when they reach her brain. This is due to the insufficient amount of myelin. Also, she has mild hearing loss in both ears. In lower tones, her loss is mild to moderate and in higher tones, it is more slight to mild.

At close proximity, Aimee can hear everything just fine. Depending on the tone and the amount of background noise, she can also hear from a distance. So if you are holding her or near her, she can hear you talking.

Our options at this point are either to have hearing aids made for her or to have her tested again in 6 months to see where we are at before making a decision. The doctor is going to confer with her colleagues and get back to us on Monday before giving us her recommendation.

We are undecided at this point as well. We definitely want to give Aimee every advantage possible, but do not want to rush into any decisions. The loss is slight and it may be directly linked to the myelin issue. If it is and we were to get her hearing aids, there is a potential that her abilities would change and we would be magnifying sounds to high.

Ugh decisions...