Here We Go Again

Sometimes I hate it when my neurotic fears turn out to be true. Aaron and I were worried that Avalon was not talking. She had stopped saying "doggie," which was previously her favorite word and was not mimicking any of our noises. After a quick note from Dana Trevino, who is a pediatric occupational therapist, encouraging us to get it checked out, we made all the necessary calls. Its been complete deja vu with what we experienced with Waylon.

First she was assessed by Regional Center, who provide services for children with developmental delays. She qualified for speech services due to a 37% delay in expressive speech, which was at the age level of a 10-month-old (she was 17 months). Her receptive speech was that of a 12-month-old, which was a 25% delay. The good news was that she had no cognitive delays. Later that week we saw the ENT and also attempted a hearing test. Initially they could not get a read on her hearing due to wax (just like Waylon). It was horrible trying to hold her down while the doctor sucked out the wax and then tried to look in her ears. She has incredibly small ear canals and he could not get all of the wax out. We again tried the hearing test, but by then she was beyond ticked off and was almost falling asleep after crying so much. The ENT wanted to have her put under general anasthesia to completely clean out her ear canals, and he was pretty sure she would need tubes, but would not know until he did the procedure.

Sadly we are getting pretty good at dragging our children to the Surgery Center. On June 1, 2009 Avalon was put under and the ENT doctor found lots of "elmers glue" fluid behind her ear drums and inserted tubes. The doctor said Avalon's ear canals were the smallest he had seen in years (from doctor that looks in kids ears all day, every day), which meant the procedure took much longer than usual. As expected she came out of the anasthesia like a crazed mama bear/alien/torture victim, but once she calmed down and we left she slept awhile and then was good as new. She had an amazing recovery and intially was trying to imitate more sounds, but has not made the impovements we expected. We go back for a hearing test in 2 weeks and she will start speech therapy very soon. She also has difficulty chewing, which is a significant reason for her picky diet, so she will also be having feeding therapy. As I always say, never a dull moment...

I did not really have any pictures that reflected her hearing and feeding issues, so I am choosing these and calling them her "tortured artist" series.