the anesthesiologist remembers who you are. Good thing we like her, because she seems to see us every time we go in. Anyway, on to today's adventure, Maddy's hearing test.
I will start by explaining the history of our concern. Maddy is progressing so well in so many areas, but socially we see a difference in her compared to other children her age. For months we have been discussing with her doctors that she does not respond to her own name, or even look at us when we try to get her attention with our voices. She also doesn't have any words yet and only babbles a few sounds. We have had tympanograms multiple times which showed that Maddy had fluid in her ears, but she had always been recently sick, so it was difficult to tell if this was the problem. We recently visited an ENT who also checked her ears and thought the fluid was minor, but wanted to re-check to see if she may need ear tubes. The physician today seemed to think the fluid was almost completely gone though and not the issue.
That brings us to the BAER test, which stands for Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response. They put Maddy to sleep and attached electrodes to her head and behind her ears and played sounds into headphones while measuring the response of her auditory nerves and brain. What the test told us was that Maddy's brain is receiving sounds normally. Unfortunately the test cannot tell us whether her brain is processing those sounds appropriately. I am pretty convinced that my daughter has Auditory Processing difficulty which goes hand in hand with the rest of the sensory processing difficulties. Now I just have to find someone who can teach us how to help her (oh, and get a diagnosis I guess, I forgot I don't have a medical degree).
We also met with our Early Intervention PT this week who mentioned she planned to refer us to a social worker this fall to assist us on working with behavior and social intervention.
Now to end this post on a lighter note. Feeding therapy is going great! Maddy has made great progress with her eating, and we are really just focusing on getting her to chew and use her tongue on both sides of her mouth (she only uses the right side). Her OT at feeding therapy thought she was so cute, she recommended her to be photographed for their website!
