Mapping & Therapy

Disclaimer:
We refer to Olivia's implants as her "ear/ears." Get over it. LOL
I will go into some detail as if none of you know anything about Implants because not a lot of people do and since I have new readers (YAY!! I LOVE NEW FRIENDS!!!!), it makes it easier sometimes to explain.
Thank you!

So today Garland and I took Olivia to Oklahoma City for her 6 month therapy and mapping for her Implants. For those of you that do not know about Cochlear Implants, you can read up on Olivia and some of her stories here, here, and here.

Olivia had a great therapy session. She was able to hear and repeat words at 10 and even 5 decibals of sound. (That's good, btw, look at it this way: 10 decibals is a whisper and without the implants, Olivia has no hearing under 150 decibals.) She does not like wearing her newer "ear" by itself. She whines and cries and pitches these fits screaming and being all dramatic that "it doesn't sound like the other one, mommy! it sounds like a BOYYY!" and trust me, she does NOT like her processor sounding like a "boy."

For those of you that don't know about CI's, the technology is wonderful and state of the art, but the sound that Olivia actually hears is not the same as you and I hear or sound. It's more robotic but with AV-Therapy, those that are trained from especially a young age, learn it better and adapt better and then the sound becomes more fluid to the listener. Some little girls that were deafened later in life have reported that their Implants sound like "Barbie" or some other type of cartoon character like with a high voice. Olivia has reported that her first ear sounds like Barbie from Mariposa (how she distinguishes this from any other Barbie movie I will never know!!!) and her new ear sounds like the Transformer Optimus Prime (yes, from the movie) but with more *insert funny 6 year old talking in deep bass here* and she doesn't like Optimus Prime in her head apparently.

Anyway. Olivia has had a hard time pronouncing simple sounds that deal with an ending 'D' and 'G'. Ex: She has been saying BLUG instead of BLOOD. When I told Dr. Wolf this, he came to the conclusion after hooking her device to his computer, that Olivia isn't hearing low frequencies well enough to distinguish the difference and that he would need to turn up her lower frequency in order for her to be able to learn the sounds. Then Dr. Wolf went into her master volume and tried to turn it up and Olivia.TOTALLY.FREAKED.out. Seriously. The girl went into a screaming crying fit I haven't seen since she was like 2. WTF? She's in the seat screaming it was too loud. So Dr. Wolf took it off her and hooked it to the computer again and noticed that her higher frequency sounds were extremely loud as it was, and were even louder if he turned up the master volume. So he brought down the volume of the high frequency sounds and she was happier and then he was able to turn up her master volume.

Yay! So we should see Olivia responding better to lower frequency sounds. We should see her continue to progress in the higher frequency sounds. We should see her progress in everything now that her internal master volume was turned up. Instructions: Olivia must wear her new ear by itself when not at school or a social function so that she can learn to utilize the sound she is hearing with it and not use her other ear as a crutch. The reason why they are doing it only when we are at home is because they don't want her to become frustrated if she can't completely hear anything in social environments. Also, when she doesn't fully understand things, background noise becomes more prominent because she is easily distracted and then she gets overstimulated and then...well...we ALL know what happens when children get overstimulated!!

We got back in town tonight about 7 pm, did a quick run through Glenpool, ate, and then came home. Olivia is already complaining about not being able to wear her older ear, but she's not pitching too much of a fit. For now. Now I have to go get them in bed. FUUUN....