I am the hearing mother of four beautiful girls ranging in age from 13 years to 17 months. Our oldest daughter, Peyton, was born hearing and suddenly lost her hearing at age 3. She had her first cochlear implant at age 4 and her second at age 8. She is now an almost-13 year old main-streamed straight A 7th grader. She has no speech delay and is flourishing! Our second daughter, Karson, was born two years later and has normal hearing. The third girl, Larkin, came along in 2008; she also has normal hearing. Our little surprise, Jeslyn, was born in December of 2010. She passed her newborn hearing screen, but then things began to change...
Because of our oldest daughter, I have been vigilant in watching the other three to make sure that if a problem exists, I would catch it right away. Jeslyn is a happy, active little girl. She plays hard, and for that reason, I guess I made the excuse that she was really focused or distracted by her toys. Although, one Saturday morning, Jeslyn woke up and I went in her room to get her. I walked in and she was lying with her back to the door. I said, "Good morning Jeslyn", no response. I said it again, and still nothing. I went to the window and opened the curtain and she instantly turned and stood up. That is when I became worried that we were in for another journey of hearing loss.
Luckily, God had placed us right where we needed to be. I happen to manage a neurotologist practice. I explained to the audiologist what I was seeing with Jeslyn and she said to bring her in right away. The next day, she had her first test and the results were not good. Her audiogram placed her in the moderate to profound hearing loss range.
The next step was a sedated ABR, CT scan and MRI. Because she is so young, we hoped that the results would be better when we took out the environmental factors. Unfortunately, the results were worse than better.
Sadly, we realized that this journey was ours to take yet again.
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