Friday, March 14, 2014

Time for a Hearing Check!

This is the longest we've been between hearing evaluations... six months! I really wasn't concerned this time because I feel pretty confident about being able to tell what she is able to hear. However, I always have a small bit of anxiety because there's always a possibility that her hearing can change.

Olivia's audiologist is wonderful and I never have to wonder if we are getting a reliable audiogram, so for that peace of mind it's worth the 3 hour drive! After a clear middle ear check, we started testing in the booth. Our audiologist was able to get a complete audiogram as well as speech recognition threshold testing. She was pretty amazed that Olivia knew enough vocabulary and was able to do the speech recognition testing at a mere 21 months old! Olivia was presented with pictures and had to listen as her audiologist presented the words at different levels.. this allowed the audiologist tell what level Olivia is comprehending speech. During pure tone testing, Olivia did great. She just turned and waved at the animals like a pro. They were super impressed with her vocabulary and her testing ability. We also practiced play audiometry which she will do the next time we go for an evaluation. This is where she is conditioned to listen and put a block in the box when she hears the sound. Eventually she will get where she can raise her hand when she hears the tones. 

Olivia's hearing continues to be stable.. her loss slopes down as frequencies get higher. Her speech recognition thresholds were 45 dB in the right ear and 50 dB in the left ear unaided. For a reference, conversational speech is around 55-60 dB. Even when she doesn't have her hearing aids in she understands a lot of what you tell her. 

After her hearing testing we met with Hannah, Olivia's SLP/Auditory Verbal Therapist. Hannah did a new language evaluation, the PLS-5 (Pre-school Language Scale) to see how Olivia is progressing.  Here are her new scores! 



Standard Score*
Percentile Rank
Severity Rating
Auditory Comprehension
124
95
Above Average
Expression
Communication
123
94
Above Average
Total Language Score
125
95
Above Average

Olivia Jane continues to amaze me and makes me so proud. She is so smart, so beautiful,  and so so sweet. She is the most perfect daughter I could have imagined and I'm thankful God chose me to be her Mommy. 





Her hearing aids are lopsided right now because we had to send one of her FM receivers off to be worked on where the battery lock broke. I'm glad they are still under warranty!

New audiological testing

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