Cochlear Implant/Charlotte Update.

This is what a cochlear implant looks on the outside. Most of the kids in Charlotte's program has these and I'm quite used to what they look like. So I'm not worried about what it would be like for Charlotte. You get to choose between so many colors (for the device that looks like a hearing aid!) I'm excited for that : )

Okay, this is a little more complicated. This is what the implant is like inside of the person. I can't even describe what to think or to explain it. So just click here to find out more about cochlear implants. There are two MAIN companies for cochlear implants. There is a 3rd but not as common in America. We are looking into the Cochlear brand over the Bionic brand.

So as you can tell from the pictures above that we have decided to give Charlotte an implant. She is scheduled for June 5 to have it done and then "turned on" on the 25th. We leave for NZ on the 30th and we talked with the Dr. about it and he was totally confident there wasn't going to be any problems or anything if we go ahead with our scheduled holiday. We are waiting until June because the Dr. did say that if Charlotte had her hearing come back it would be within the first 4 months (information that was quite different when this first happened. We were told the first 10-14 days). He's the expert. He is one of the top 5 ENT surgeons in the nation so I believe him. So if that happened, we, of course, would cancel the surgery. He also said there is a risk with the facial nerve but he has never hit it...but that doesn't mean there's always a first. But he said the only time he's been in surgery where another surgeon had nicked the facial nerve. And that was before all the technology to show how close they are to the nerve. So even though we are really scared still, we are fully confident in Dr. Shelton's abilities. I was so glad this appt. went more smoothly and positive compared to the last appt. two years ago (Wade and the dr. got in a full on argument....)

Her hearing came back only a little bit. She pretty much only hears us call her name and that's about it. But she's adapted so well! She now knows the alphabet in sign and can sign for us different letters if we show her them. She knows 1-10 in sign and can tell us what number the sign is if we show her a number on something (we love doing this in Walmart with the aisle numbers or prices of food). She of course can sign her name too. A smart cookie! She's picking up sign language so fast! I love to see her learning more and more and understanding what we mean when we sign to her. Her new thing to sign to people besides a thumbs up and peace sign is the letter "x". ha ha. She's a crack up!