Hearing

 

This past summer, after The Boy had more tubes put in and more hearing testing done, it was determined that he has a mild hearing loss in both ears. One ear a little worse than the other but still considered mild. Such a loss that would benefit from wearing hearing aids.

So with many heavy sighs we moved forward. The sighs were for a few reasons. 1. It’s. One. More. Thing. Involving many trips to the Audiologist an hour a way.  2. Most things with this Boy involved lots of repetition. As in repeatedly putting glasses back on, telling him to “ask permission,” putting him back in bed over and over again.  I knew that getting him to wear hearing aids would take lots of that repetition and lots of persistence. 3. This was one of those for-the-rest-of-his-life things. That overwhelms me.

Even with all the sighing we moved forward. We let him pick the color. Since at this point it was all about him loving everything about them and not making them small and inconspicuous so no one would notice.

The process involves taking an ear mold of his ear then those are sent off. Then they make them into cool looking ear molds with a tube going in, then another device (the part that goes behind his ear) with a tube is attached. They are set up for an FM system, which he can use at school. The teacher wears a little microphone so everything she says is amplified just for him. The silver button on the back control channels, one flashing light is on the reg. channel. Two flashing lights is on the FM system channel. Also the volume control is disabled, genius. I don’t need him muting me.

When he first go them he kept them in for about 1.7 seconds. I found that if he was doing something, like eating or watching a movie, he was distracted enough to keep them in. Otherwise, no go. The other issue was that he was pulling them out by the tube. Big no no in the world of hearing aids. It was only after a couple of days that he had pulled the tube out of the mold and the Audiologist had to glue it back in.

When school started I was grateful to have help with the fighting. But like always he aims to please, other people. Eventually he started doing better wearing them. At school. I would also make him wear them during the first hour of church. With me sitting on one side and his Granny on the other the poor kid didn’t stand a chance. Which he figured out, real quick.

Occasionally he would take them out while at school but there were always plenty of people around to stop him or put them right back in. Then last week he was so quick and pulled right on the tube and now both hearing aids have holds in the tubes. Which makes them not so useful. On top of that one of the ear molds has a tear.

So The Boy and I are headed back to the Audiologist, an hour away, to get a new ear mold done and to leave the holey tubes to be fixed.

The sighing continues.