Big brother, Snort, helping entertain Little Guy.
The computer read-out. The white box represents speech sounds. We want the peaks (showing what he hears) to land within the white box.
Little Guy hanging out during the test.
Chewing the camera cord kept his hands busy and out of the way.
Deanna helped hold the receptor in just the right place for the test. Little Guy looks a little skeptical.
Little Guy loves playing with all the noise toys. This cochlear cowboy hat was his favorite.
A better view of the probe in his ear.
Michele watching the computer so she can use the data to correct his hearing aid programming.
Can you see the tiny wire there? Totally painless, but it does make him giggle with the tickly feeling it gives him.
Holding the receptor in place.Little Guy can't have another ABR as frequently as we'd like because it's a huge undertaking to work around his breathing issues for the sedation. So, Michele uses live speech mapping to get an idea of how well his hearing aids are helping him.
She inserts tiny wires into his ear behind his hearing aid and then simply begins speaking or making sounds around him. The wires are attached to a computer, which provides us with a read-out of what he is hearing with his aids. From there, we are able to adjust his hearing aids accordingly. It is completely painless as you can see from the pictures, and it's a good alternative to frequent ABR testing.
Very cool! Nolan has never had an aided hearing test or a real-ear measurement taken. It makes me nervous sometimes, but his speech is coming along well, so his hearing aids must be OK. I love the computer read-out (I am obsessed with graphs, lol)!
ReplyDeleteThey should be able to do a behavioral audiogram fairly soon- I think we got an accurate one on Nolan at around 8 months old (though most of them were in a soundfield, it still gave us an idea of what his better ear was hearing).