Therapy continues

Miss Kat had another great session with her therapist yesterday. She has been improving by leaps and bounds. The whole team is so excited by her progress. Our therapist said that if we had asked for a CI a year ago, she would have thought it was a bad idea. But now she thinks that Miss Kat is a great candidate. She said she believes that once Katrina gets the implant, her spoken language will explode.

I'm going to try to explain what Miss Kat was doing in speech, but it is a little complicated so I hope it makes sense. Katrina doesn't understand a whole lot of speech yet, she has a few dozen words that she can process. But, that is understandable with her hearing loss. Right now we are working on just hearing different rhythms. Miss Kat was able to tell the difference between "ouch!", "Sit down", and "Do you want to play?". Again, she didn't understand the meaning (except for ouch, because she uses that word already) but she was able to tell which was spoken 100% of the time! That means that she can hear the difference in syllables and can remember which picture corresponds to which phrase.

I don't know if any of this sounds like a big deal to anyone else, but for us, it is huge. Miss Kat is finally making progress. She had been stuck at the same level for 2+ years. She didn't understand and she couldn't do it. We have really had a break through, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I feel like this is just another sign that the implant is the right thing, and that now is the right time.