Fast Forward...A lot!

Well as you can see I have been somewhat sidetracked when it comes to this blog--maybe because in the last four months I have moved back to my house, welcomed my husband home from Iraq (yet again), left one early intervention program for another, undertaken a major home renovation, etc. It seems like I blinked and it was already time for fireworks! Since I haven't written in a while and now am so far behind in telling Abby's story, I am going to do a catch up post. So here goes...

Abigail has now been aided for 234 days (she was aided on November 6th at about 10 weeks.) For the first 215 days we were unknowingly operating the volume control (this feature was supposed to be disabled by our audiologist) and she would go through periods of crying and pulling them out repeatedly, which we have since attributed to the volume being way to loud and causing extreme discomfort for her little ears. I am quite displeased with our first audiologist who dismissed my early concerns that there was something wrong with the volume, however I am unable to voice my concerns since she conveniently moved just 1 week before discovering the problem. I hate the turnover in this industry, but I will reserve that for another post at a later date. We now have her aids up and running properly and she seems to be happy as a clam!

Her early blood tests indicated an elevated level of triglycerides and we were referred to a gastro doc to follow up. Our ENT explained that sometimes high levels of cholesterol can lead to hearing loss and we definitely want to preserve the residual hearing that she has. The gastro doc suspected that it was simply an inaccurate test result and reordered a second round of bloodwork. We recently met with our pediatrician who informed us that this second test also indicated a high cholesterol level and we are awaiting our follow-up with the gastro doc to discuss what exactly this means.

We moved back to our Ohio home in early May (my husband was deployed for 7 months to Iraq and we relocated to Pittsburgh) and started early intervention services back up. Abigail received a second developmental assessment at 9 months in preparation for a new IFSP to be created so that we could begin services as soon as possible. I will talk in my next post about the assessment and her new IFSP.