Not sure how to make this a short post but I'll try my best. Spencer has failed every hearing test that has ever been given to him. Starting with the newborn test in the hospital. We took him back at 1 week old and they determined it was probably just some fluid in his ears. He continued to fail all of the screenings for preschool, kindergarten, and on and on. It was a cycle I was used to: he would fail the test and they would retest him. He would fail again and the school nurse would send me a letter. I did take him a few years ago to our pediatrician who did a quick check and didn't notice any fluid. But I started noticing little 'red flags' more and scheduled an appt. with an ENT. After a lengthy wait through many tests with the audiologist this week I was told Spencer has moderate hearing loss. He only hears about 30% of tones normally. All other tones he does not hear at normal levels. The dr. told me that it is the 30% that he does hear normally that has allowed him to "do so well". (In my words...not need a hearing aid or amplification.) I was told that he would benefit from a hearing aid but that is up to us considering how well he is doing. We can do further testing (ct scans, etc.) to see where the exact cause of hearing loss is (although we think it is most likely inner ear and not nerve) and the testing would provide us a better idea of if further loss could happen.
These results don't necessarily upset me...he is doing great. They do, however, provide soooo many answers to things I've noticed as his mother...almost like so many things just make sense now. He is extremely sensitive to certain tones. ie. I just thought he was overly dramatic at the noise on airplanes. Fact is that the tones an airplane provides seem to be at extreme levels to him. I'm learning more about it as we go. And that is a recap of Spencer's 100th hearing test. :)
I remember you saying he never passed those tests...I never would have guessed he had a problem. That makes all his accompishments so much better!
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