A Diagnosis - part 2

I was thrilled when the audiologist called me later that same day to say she could get us in within two weeks.

We would have to sleep deprive O in order to make sure he would sleep through the test, but she assured me that we would have whatever time needed to get him to sleep once we got there.

The morning of the appointment came, I had a cranky baby in my arms, and my phone rang. It was the receptionist for the audiology dept. calling to cancel as one of the audiologists were out sick. I would hear back, she said, with a new appointment.

About a week later that finally happened. A new audiologist I hadn't dealt with called to schedule a time. He seemed flustered and short, deciding that he would bring us back without a second audiologist in a week's time.

Again I sleep deprived O and got ready for the appointment. Since he is now also solely bottle fed I made sure he was hungry and tired by the time we left. When arrived we went to the waiting room. When this new audiologist came to get us he decided to again run a tympanometry. No real surprise but O's ear had flip flopped again - one was showing decent movement, the other was not.

We then went in to the room where he was to perform the test. O was restless and hungry, but this audiologist didn't seem to care. He went about everything else, so finally I just took out the bottle and started to feed O.

The testing took the better part of two hours, during which time O made a valiant effort to stay asleep in my arms. Have you ever held a baby for two hours trying to be as still as possible? That shit sucks.

But I digress. After two hours we were no better off than we had been. Since he wasn't very open or talkative with us before or during we had no idea what was really happening. It turns out the audiologist ran a more specific version of the ABR instead of the bone vibration test we had been told would be performed. He was more or less confident in the results (which didn't look very good) but he wanted us to come back, again, to do the bone vibration test.

The very next week I again sleep deprived my baby. Again he ran a tympanometry test and this time there was decent movement in both ears. The second audiologist was a bit better, but barely, when it came to expressing what was happening during the test. I volun-told my husband that it was his turn to hold O during the test.

Sleep deprived and deceptively happy - that only lasted a minute

Nearly three hours later we had the results: O has moderate-severe hearing loss in both ears.