12 years since Activation

 Here we sit on a typical Saturday morning. 

Miss Kat was up late last night finishing her homework for the week. She had an essay due and she had put it off until the last minute, but she finished and turned it in. She is in a college transition program this year and will be attending BYU-I online full-time starting next September. She intends to major in computer animation.

She is spending the evening tonight going out with a boy she is seeing. He is 19 (she is 17 1/2). This is their third official date (but they also hang-out at their bible study group). 

Our lives dramatically changed 12 years ago. The world was turned upside down. We moved across the country. I began a new career. Miss Kat shifted communication modes and learned to listen, talk, read, and is now so very typical. Here are three very average examples:

1. Miss Kat spends around an hour a day in her room dancing. She makes up choreography to her favorite songs and jams out!
2. Last week she was having some pain but it had passed and she told me she was feeling better. She said, "My 'groinal' area is doing much better". GROINAL?! It takes a native fluency in a language to understand how we would change one category of word into another with a small change like that :) That is true mastery of English.
3. Today when talking about retention of her CIs on rollercoasters for her date she said, "I always forget that I am deaf, but when I have to wear (item she didn't want) everything gets messed up with my implants and I have to think about it all day".

That's the changes in the last 12 years. We have gone from absolutely having to attend a Deaf school for access to education to being 100% mainstreamed with no supports. From having to drive all over town to visit the few Deaf friends she had, to attending anime conventions with her besties from the neighborhood and church. She went from understanding ASL only to not even struggling to listen when people are wearing masks!

I would have NEVER believed we would have gotten here. I thought it was impossible. I could have never foreseen the difference this technology could make in a child's life, but here we are. Here is our very typical Saturday morning.