Miss Kat on the news!!

Just after Christmas Miss Kat sent her Nana a letter on her new Hello Kitty stationary that she had gotten from Santa. Unfortunately, the letter was so small that it seemed undeliverable...oh, and she forgot the stamp!   Someone with a big heart at the post office decided that this little letter deserved to make it to its destination, and yesterday, unbeknownst to us, Nana received the letter. Nana was so moved by the generosity and caring of the post office that she called her local news station to share the happy story.

Utah news story

Well, a station here in St. Louis heard about the story and asked to interview Miss Kat about it! They came to her school and asked her some questions. She did an amazing job!!

St. Louis news story

The interviewer spoke with Miss Kat for an hour and a half in total. She understood everything he asked her, and he was clearly able to understand her as well. She pulled out some amazing vocabulary (rockstar and impressed, and a few other doozies!) Miss Kat was so poised and amazing that her teachers actually cried from pride!

WAY TO GO BABY GIRL!!!

Christmas Program

Every year since Miss Kat has entered school, her Christmas program has been a barometer for how i feel about her school and the education she is receiving. When she was attending her bi-bi school, I wept with joy to see her surrounded by children like herself and to see her language developing. When we switched to the oral program, I cried again, but this time it was with misery when I saw her surrounded by typically hearing children with language that was miles beyond hers and we watched as she struggled to follow what was happening. She pretended to know the words to songs far beyond her comprehension level, and she just smiled and nodded, completely lost.

Again, since we have moved, the Christmas program has reminded me about the differences in the schools we have chosen for Miss Kat. This year, again, I cried. I saw how much this school has transformed her life and what a great opportunity it has been for her.

Here is a video of the upper primary students doing a dance routine they learned in gym class. Miss Kat is in the second row in the red dress and black leggings.

Silence

I was talking to Miss Kat with her implants off tonight and I asked her if she could hear me. She said "No but I can read your lips and your signing". (Of course I knew she couldn't hear me but it was leading to the next part.) So I asked her what she could hear and her answer was "Nothing". So, I asked her if it was weird not hearing, and she said "No, I like the peace and quiet." Then she said "I like hearing things like jokes, but not the rain, or the crashing and crackles (I think she meant lightning and thunder). Daddy has to wear those things in his ears (earplugs). But that is why i am just deaf."

Insightful.

Observations from a deaf child

This weekend Miss Kat made three really cute comments about her hearing that I feel like I just had to share with the world.

The first was Saturday afternoon when Miss Kat was hanging out with her Grammy. They both had headaches and Grammy was bemoaning every sound that hurt her head. Miss Kat flicked off her headpieces and smiled widely. She said to Grammy, "Bet you wish you could do this! There is no more noise." And then she laughed.

Later that night it was time to say prayers and Miss Kat had already taken off her processors. She said "Don't worry, I can just say it in my mind." She then proceeded to say the prayer aloud...guess she didn't realize that we can still hear when her processors are off. 

The last was on the way home from church today. We were listening to Christmas songs. Miss Kat disagreed with Grammy's interpretations of some lyrics so she said, "You are not good at listening. Maybe you need new cochlear implants!"

Time passes...

I don't even know what I am going to say with this post, but here goes.

Miss Kat just passed her fourth anniversary of activation of her first CI. It has been a crazy four years! She has grown and blossomed in so many ways. My opinions have changed as our journey has continued. We are in such a different place than I expected when we took our first steps on this road. I was arrogant, I was misinformed and closed minded. I thought I was smarter than all the other parents. I thought that I had it all figured out. Well, life has a way of showing you how wrong you are!

Miss Kat is now functionally, completely oral. Yes, we continue to expose her to ASL, we try to attend ASL/Deaf community events, use interpreters, have her around ASL using adults and children, but on an every day basis, as a communication method, she doesn't use ASL. I certainly never saw that coming. I don't think anyone did! It was never our intention to for Miss Kat to use spoken language as her primary language. We assumed that she would be using ASL for expressive and receptive communication every day for the rest of her life. As fate would have it, that isn't how things turned out.

I thought I knew what our path looked like, and I judged others who did not choose the same. I thought we were smarter, better parents, and that we "got it" when they didn't. Again, fate stepped in an showed me that I was wrong. There is a whole other world that I had never been exposed to, a whole group of deaf people whose experiences I had never heard. My eyes were opened, and I recognized how naive I had been.

This journey has certainly been a surprise, but every day when I see how happy she is, how much she enjoys communicating, how many doors have been opened for her, I wouldn't change a thing.

Advanced Bionics New Products!

Here is the paperwork from which these photos are pulled. It is a PowerPoint presentation given to investors on Thursday. http://www.sonova.com/Presentations/20121025_EUHA_Presentation_Handout_1.pdf

And here are the photos of the new internal device and processor.

They are a little blurry because they had to be blown up from the PowerPoint, but I think it is clear that they are much smaller and thinner than the Harmony. They also obviously have a thinner T-mic. The internal receiver appears to be thinner and square now, rather than round like the 90K. In one of the photos the battery case is rounded but in the other the corners are flat...my fully uninformed, wild guess would be that one is rechargeable, the other disposables.

And your baseless guesses, uninformed opinions???

Back to school, times two

Miss Kat is back to school and loving it! She has bumped up a level, so to speak. At her school, the students are grouped by ability, rather than by grade. Last year, as well as the first semester she was here, Miss Kat was grouped with kids a little bit younger than her. This year, she is with students OLDER than her! She has really made a lot of progress, especially in reading. They were reading the Captain Underpants LAST YEAR! This year they are reading Little House on the Prairie. This is a really big jump, but I think she is weathering it well and she will rise to the occasion. Our IEP is next week, and we will get the results of her latest testing and write up our goals (which I will share here, of course).

The next piece of news is that I have also returned to school! 

 I am in school full time again, and guess what I am going to be? That's right, a teacher of the deaf!! (Hubby thinks I should put in the extra two years and do audiology, which is a passion of mine, but I have always been a teacher, so the classroom holds a special place in my heart, so we'll see!)