Appointments, Part 2: Audiology

This post started out as a full description of all the the specialists we have seen so far, but I quickly realized that it would take a couple of hours to read it all, so I better break it up a little:)

We spent yesterday morning at the Commission's cleft clinic.  We have done this more times than we can count with Kate, but for Jack it was a new experience.  Thankfully it went very well.  And so there is good news, and there is bad news. 

First, the good news.

We saw Kate' regular audiologist (who is now Jack's audiologist), and she did an evaluation, even though Jack's ears are full of fluid and infected.  She told us that she feels like with tubes, Jack has a great chance at completely normal hearing.  We are absolutely thrilled with this news.  She said his loss is probably mild/moderate and told us to come back when his ears are infection-free for a more accurate test.  She also requested a sedated ABR to be done during the palate repair. 

And now for the bad news. 

Jack's enrollment in early intervention was based on his hearing loss being severe in his left ear.  A diagnosis of mild/moderate hearing loss means that he no longer qualifies for services based on his hearing loss.  When Kate was enrolled, cleft palate was considered a significant enough issue to get her in the program, but it no longer does.  (I would love to know how many cleft kids don't need speech services, for Pete's sake.)  And so now I have to start from scratch and get him qualified another way.  Basically it has to be proven that he has significant development delays to get the speech therapy that he will obviously need, even though he is very young and the delays aren't that serious yet.  Should be fun. I am eagerly awaiting the paperwork to get the ball rolling on that. Hopefully his expressive/receptive speech delays will be considered significant enough, because I don't think his motor delays alone will be.

The OT we saw on Wednesday had warned me about this.  Unfortunately, budget cuts mean that they have to find ways to cut services for kids who need them.  She said that I will have to fight for services that they automatically would've offered to Kate.  That's ok.  I am pretty good at that.  Y'all remember how much I love arguing with navigating insurance companies, state-run red tape services, and healthcare providers? Actually I take a sick pleasure in conquering it, but that is probably a post for another day.