January 2010

Well this month has been very crazy!  Morgan started going to school for the full day now instead of 1/2 day.  She goes to Mrs. Mcamy in the afternoon for more fun and education...she is one smart cookie!  She loves going and asks to go everyday!   We found out that we are officially schedule for a 2nd "ear" on April 21st.  I am so excited yet so nervous.  I over analyze everything so I am starting to wonder if we are doing the right things.  Thanks to my friends on CI Circle I feel much better about it. 
January 13th-was a crazy horrible night.  Morgan woke up with vertigo.  She was so dizzy she couldn't walk, and she kept bobbing her head to the right side.  I was so scared.  Even though she had a dizzy spell over a year ago it was still really scary.  She threw up a few times and then finally fell asleep for the rest of the night.  Which wasn't very long since we didn't fall asleep until about 3 am.  She wasn't dizzy anymore when she woke up, but was still a little unsteady walking.  We went to the pediatrician right away at 9 am to have them check her over and make sure her ears were not infected.  Everything checked out good.  Also was in contact with Dr. Germiller and his nurses.  There weren't to concerned about anything and had us watch to make sure she didn't get really high fever in case of meningitis and that if she showed signs of ear infection to take her to her dr.  Well she ended up getting an ear infection that Saturday night into Sunday(Jan 17th)  The Dr said there was lots of cloudy, mucky fluid in her ear and it didn't look nice.  He told Morgan he was looking for potatoes in her ears, and then when he saw that he told her she had rotten potatoes in that ear.  She really enjoyed his humor.
January 28-we have an appt to see Dr Germiller for a checkup and to see if we need tubes put in before the implant surgery, since we had another ear infection.  During the check up they asked a bunch of questions for the anesthesia part of her surgery to get that out of the way and Dr. Germiller also still found some fluid in Morgan's right ear.  It wasn't infected but it just wasn't draining all the way.  He had them to a tympanagram to see if her ear drum was moving, and the results were just what he had suspected.  Not moving very well from the fluid.  He also had them take an xray of her neck and head to look at her adenoids, to see if he needed to remove them.  Luckily they are normal and can stay put.  He will need to put new tubes in on Feb 19th though.  So we can get rid of the fluid and have time to recover before the big surgery.
Here is a copy of the x ray that they took, you can see the implant that is inside of Morgan's head... I thought it was awesome.

This first one is from the day she had surgery on 7/13/07 and the second one is from her dr appt 1/28/10.

End of One Year/Beginning of a New Year

Well I have made a promise to myself and Morgan that my New Years Resolution is going to be to keep her blog updated on a regular basis from now on.  I just let life get in the way of sitting down and writing and sharing some of the events that  have been going on.  So in this post I will fill you in on the end of 2009 and the beginning of the New Year 2010.

Oct 20th, 2009
Morgan had an audiologist and speech therapy appt at CHOP.  She was first tested in the booth and did very well, heard things that I myself couldn't hear.  They didn't really change to much on her mapping except that the little light that would always blink red is now reprogrammed to only flash red when there is a problem, such as the magnet falls off her head or something is wrong with the coil, processor, or microphone.  So far that has been going very well.  Her teachers seem to like that much better!  They have less to watch for and they know for sure is something isn't right.  I have so videos of Morgan in the booth being tested and what she has to do in the booth.  She also had her speech therapy appt, they said you could line up a bunch of "normal" hear kids and you would never be able to tell that Morgan wasn't one of them.  She fits right it.  What more could a Mother ask for.  She was testing at a 4 year old level in some things and then age appropriate in others.

Dec 1, 2009----Morgan is going to be getting a second implant in 2010, so one of the tests that Dr. Germiller wants Morgan to have is a Vestibular or Balance test.  This has to be done at University of Penn because CHOP doesn't do it.  Its a test that is usually done on older people.  They just keep telling me that it will be really dark and they will spin her and that she will have to wear a type of goggle over her eyes to measure the movement, that will be able to tell them in there is any inner ear damage.  I was very nervous for this testing as it doesn't sound like it will be very fun.  I asked around to see if anyone else had this done and not many other did, and the ones that did have this testing done didn't have it done the same way they are explaining it to me.  So to me the unexpected is a little scary when your getting it done to your 3 yr old.  Well we get to the hospital and it started off bad from the time we walked in the hospital.  Due to the Swine Flu going around they made all the children wear masks....Morgan did not like this especially because we didn't have to wear one.  She just didn't understand as well as me.  I could have gotten the germs and gave them to her as soon as we got in the room and took her mask off...yeah well what are you going to do, we need to follow the rules.  Next they looked in Morgan's ears and low and behold she had a bunch of wax in her ears. Nothing new, she must have the waxiest ears ever.  I think she gets that from her Pop Pop!  So the Dr had to find and ENT to come in and remove the wax.  She came back and said it was going to take a little longer because none of the ENT's at the Univ of Penn wanted to do it...since when won't they work on a child?  So they paged Dr Germiller at CHOP in hopes that he was in that day.   It was our lucky day, he was in and he said instead of us walking over there, that he would come to us.  I love that Man!   In the mean time we did a test that didn't matter if there was wax or not.  Morgan needed to sit on either my lap or my husbands, and well lucky me Morgan wanted me, and I so didn't want to do this(hence why I made Ben come with)  Well they sit me on a chair that looked like a chair from the eye dr's in a little tiny circular box.  They put this huge crazy headband looking thing that had a turn dial thing in the back to loosen and tighten the goggles.  They were just clear lenses that hung infront of Morgan's face.  I had to hold her head from moving as well as hold the headband/hat thing on so it didn't move as well.  You can only imagine my face at this point and then they tell us they are going to close the door and  it will be completely dark.  Then a little red laser dot came up on the wall and Morgan had to follow it with her eyes.  They should have tested me to cause my eye kept following that stupid thing too.  Then the chair starts spinning pretty fast I must add, she could not have sat in it herself and stayed put.  Then the walls turned to thick black and white stripes as they continue to spin us the whole time.  Then it just went pitch black again.  I was asking how much longer, and Morgan just thought of it as a ride at Disney World.  The spun us from anywhere between 5-10 min.  My stomach was sick:(  Good for Morgan Yucky for me. Then we went into a different room, and as we were sitting in there Dr Germiller found us and cleaned out Morgan's ears.  Not her favorite thing, she throws a fit every time and it getting harder to hold her down.  Now with all the wax out we are good to go for the next test.  She had to wear goggles again but this time they were directly on her face, and she had to look through them at a projection screen and follow I believe it was a smiley face and then a green dot.  Then then blacked out the lenses and she was seeing something in them but I don't know what.  The last part of the test was they had to blow air into her implanted ear for 1 min straight.  Of course right after it gets cleaned out and she freaks out again about have something in her ear.  It took three of us to hold her down and the tech to be blowing the air in.  Then her implant was falling off and we couldn't find it because it was in the crack of the chair and we needed her to open her eyes once we got the goggles positioned again and she couldn't hear us telling her to open her eyes and this was all time critical.  Finally she opened her eyes in enough time to get a reading.  We got the results before we left that she was approved to get her second implant.  This test was to see if there was any inner ear damage done during her first surgery.  If there was damage in her left and then got her 2nd implant and there was also damage done on that ear it could throw off her balance for the rest of her life.  Yippy we are good to go.  Now we just need to fill out the intake paperwork and get insurance to approve us.  Oh and we have to go have a sticking hearing aid check to make sure yet again that it doesn't work.

Dec 18th, 2009--Morgan had her first dose of the swine flu mist vacine.  Nothing to eventful with that thank goodness.

Dec 24,2009--Morgan started her Christmas Eve with a hearing test with her hearing aid on her right ear.  She just didn't undstand why she couldn't have her implant on.  She kept saying I can't hear its not working.  If that isn't enough proof that she can't hear with the help of a hearing aid then I don't know what is.  Needless to say she is approved from the audiologist stand point.

We had a GREAT Christmas, and I think santa was very good to everyone.  Morgan was as the perfect age for everything this year and she really understood santa this year, and loved sitting on his lap.

She has been still going to Theraplay once a week and doing great there.  Her two favorite therapist are Lindsay and Emily.  She basically won't give the other poor girls the time of day if she has them.  But is a little chater box for the other two.

Penn View continues to do a fantastic job with Morgan.  On the 29th of Dec we all got to go watch her in her first play.  She was the cutest little lamb, and she sang her little heart out to Away in a Manger and Jingle Bells.  It brought tears to all of our faces hearing a deaf child sing so beautiful!

I promise to do a better job at updating this.  It makes it hard when I can't sign in on my own computer at home for some reason...I need to get that checked out.