So what has little Miss Molly been up to. Well after her first activation, she has hit the ground running, making progress leaps and bounds. Her speech therapist continues to comment that she is floored with how quickly she is picking things up and her new ear is catching up quickly. She started saying mama back in July and dada followed probably three weeks or so later. She also started saying uh,uh,uh for up,up,up around August. Sometimes she even says bye bye. Lately she sees a horse and makes the tongue click sound, which in therapy is the noise we make for a horse. Also when she sees a car, she makes the vibrating lip roll b sound, also a therapy noise for car, you know like a raspberry sound, but without the tongue out. She calls Adam, Ada. and when she wants to eat makes a lip smacking noise. This is all due to the hard work we do in therapy. Which is once a week in the office and then I get a lesson plan for the week and am supposed to do an hour a day. Which translates into using therapy words, games, and songs all day, so I don't have to worry about her getting enough time in. She really loves sound and listening! She is so vocal all the time, I'm sure we will have more words to add to the list very soon! She loves music and even dances whenever she hears it.
We went to Emory genetics and found out that Molly had a 1/4 chance of being born deaf and that Adam has a 3/4 chance of being a carrier for connexin 26, which is the gene mutation for deafness. Aaron and I have not been tested yet, kaiser makes us do that in house, but we more than likely are carriers of the mutation as well.
The end of last month Molly had surgery number two, which went even better than the last time. She did awesome and had very little swelling and was completely our little Molly who gets into everything within a week. Oh yeah she started walking full time around 14 months and I swear is trying to run a lot more lately. The doctor was really happy with how she healed and he did an excellent job, her scars are so small. Just Friday we went to the audiologist and she turned on Molly's other ear, video coming as soon as Aaron uploads it. She did great and the audiologist was super pleased with how well she responded and that she was already detecting really quiet sounds. She is adjusting well to two ears, but is giving me somewhat of a hard time keeping the new one on, which is a normal part of the process.
So I've had a lot of questions about why activation is three weeks later and about her processors, so I'll address that too. Ok first, the space between surgery and activation. The implant itself is placed in Molly's head and cochlea during surgery. It's what picks up the sound waves and translates them into electrical impulses to send to the brain. However, until the processor is hooked up the implant is not switched on. So activation turns it on and the processor sticks on her head with a magnet and tells the implant how to tell the brain what it's picking up. Second, Molly currently has two different processors both made by advanced bionics,but very different. Why two you ask, because in between surgeries AB came out with brand new amazing technology and we can get the very latest for Molly on the insurance dime. Her first processor is called the Neptune and is waterproof, cool right, so that means pool time and baths all with sound! It comes in really cute colors and is worn off her ear. The new one we just got, and will be transitioning both ears to, is called the Naida and it's amazing. It is worn over the ear and has a ton of cool features, like background noise cancelation and the ability to stream anything with Bluetooth directly into it, so tv,mp3 player, phone etc. you can learn more here http://www.advancedbionics.com/com/en/naida_ci_q70.html if you are interested. It is not waterproof, but might be adapted soon, until then we still have the Neptune!
All in all it's been a very busy and exciting couple months. We are so blessed by all your outpouring of love and support and it has been amazing to watch God's hand in all of this. He really is in the business of miracles!
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