Mapping #4 INTERESTING results

Hmmm,  yesterday's mapping was interesting.  This is Lalita.  She is an audiologist from Advanced Bionics, the manufacturer of Amanda's cochlear implant, who attended Amanda's mapping to provide support to our audiologist, Fran. Both Lalita and Fran worked diligently to provide Amanda with appropriate programs.

Amanda is not that easy to program.  She has had such quirky results with her mappings; 

#1 Twitching;  #2 A feeling inside her head;  #3 Sound;  #4 Which brings us to yesterday.

AB audiologist, Lalita (L) with Fran (R) and Amanda's back

Bottom line is Amanda is hearing some things she didn't before, but she isn't hearing some that she was hearing previously...like Goldy's dog tags.  If you've been following along, you know that those tags were #1 on Amanda's list of reasons for wanting a CI.  Hopefully she'll get those back soon. And also, as of tonight, she can't hear plastic crinkling or clapping, which were additions from mapping #3 last week.  

But she CAN now hear her own voice, and that is new.  So for now, it's a trade off.

What we had heard about mappings being trial and error is revealing itself to be oh-so-true. We're living it.  EVERYTHING with this whole CI procedure for Amanda has been so unpredictable. So at least this follows a sense of consistency in a very odd way.  Sigh.

We're scheduled to go back in two months to give her auditory nerve a chance to do its thing (be stimulated after 14 years of hearing NOTHING and to then communicate with her brain.) So for now, our plan is to ride this roller coaster and see what happens.  Tomorrow is a new day.

However, we're already a little concerned that she's already adjusting to the volume as this evening she has it turned all the way up in order to hear anything.  So we'll see if we last the 2 months before we make a call and visit lovely LA again, which is about an hour and a half from home without traffic.

One REALLY POSITIVE thing is that for the first time in 14 years Amanda has an audiogram with measurable hearing!!  She's had many many many audiograms over the years and they've always looked the same NR (No Response) at any frequency or intensity.  And she now has dots above 90 dB and no arrows pointing down to 120 dB!

Shortly after we got home, Amanda and her brother, Joseph decided to have a "video iChat" with each other on their laptops.  Since Joseph has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and can't lift up his hands to sign, and Amanda can hear some things but certainly cannot identify speech at this point, take a minute to imagine how their conversation went.

Here they are comparing their screens, as they were having technical difficulties. Turns out Amanda's computer settings were on audio instead of audio/visual.  So for a while they were attempting to communicate via voice or texting.  It was pretty interesting and we tried to stay out of their way and let them figure it out unless they asked for help, which eventually they did.

Pretty soon, I got invited to join the iChat, accepted and participated briefly.  

THEN they decided to get creative with Photo Booth.  Amanda posted a lovely photo of herself along with Goldy and me on her blog. 

http://amandakristineconde.blogspot.com/ It is a must see!  

And right here, for your viewing pleasure is a one of a kind photo of the Conde family!