January 4, 2000-- Jake got a puppy from his Grandma and is telling everybody it's name, Cricket. He is pronouncing it correctly too! He said, "Cricket go boing, boing, boing...him funny Mommy." That is where the name comes from, the bouncing around! He is tiny, only 14 ounces so Jake keeps saying he is too small and telling everyone to be careful.
January 10, 2000--Jake was so proud to be 6 years old today and this is the first time he ever really heard the Happy Birthday song, which was pretty exciting for Mom and Dad! Doesn't seem like it has been almost a year since he got his implant, but February will be a year.
January 17th, 2000--Jake is very confused, his puppy died on the 14th after a very unfortunate accident and he cried his eyes out. My father died last night and Jake can't understand why Papaw is gone too. I told him that Cricket needed someone to take care of him in heaven and he seemed to be okay with that. But, I know he really doesn't understand. Times like these make you realize just how far we still have to go with language issues.
January 28, 2000--Jake was a real Papaw's boy and can't understand
that he is gone. It is kinda funny though because we keep telling him he
went up to heaven way up there in the sky. He knows where Mississippi is on the map and tonight he pointed at Mississippi and said, "Lulu down there," then pointed at Canada and said, "Papaw up there in heaven." There is no convincing him that he is wrong, but it was funny. A much needed laugh around here. We have been snowed in and had no school for almost two weeks, but the end is in sight!
February 2000--Not much this month other than school. Jake is working hard on basic skills and is catching up slowly but surely. He is making friends and is very popular among his classmates. He is mainstreamed for four hours a day now. He had his one-year post implant evaluations and scored well on the testing. He is consistently hearing at the 25dB across the board. His Paden-Brown Battery scores were:
Word Patterns 98.5%
Syllables 100%
Stress/Intonation 100%
Initial Consonants 100%
Final Consonants 94% he left the "n" off the word balloon
Vowels 95%
Diphthongs 100%
Consonant Place 78% was problems with "l" and "r"
Consonant Manner 80% was also problems with "l" and "r"
On the Early Speech perception testing he scored as follows:
Pattern Perception-Stress100% and Word 100%.
Word Identification-Spondee 85% and Monosyllable 93%.
The PBK-50 was not done due to fatigue and will be done at a later date
March 1, 2000--Jake has been able to answer to his name on the phone since the first few weeks of activation and repeat Lulu and Papaw back to my parents. He could recognize certain voices but not really understand unless they were on speaker phone. The speaker phone is how I started him practicing with listening over the phone. He moved up to answering yes and no to simple questions but usually only when my Dad talked to him. He would hear my Dad say "Hey man, what ya doin'?" and respond "okay papaw," "hi papaw" and that kind of thing. He has been lost since my Dad died and is always asking "Is that Papaw?" when you are on the phone. Well, tonight a friend of mine called and he talked on the phone to her! He answered, "uh huh, dentist fix tooth" "no, not hurt" He kept saying that I was in trouble and when she said what did you say Jake, he replied "Listen! Mommy in big trouble (for) talk on telephone". I was so excited. This is a person he has never spoken to! The thing is that he always wants to talk on the cordless phone and tonight he was on a regular phone and he understood a lot more. Once he put the phone to his aided ear and said "Wait, not hear you, (with) hearing aid" He changed back to the CI side and answered the question! I thought this was cool and his Dad wasn't home to see it, rats!
March 26, 2000--Okay, this auditory neuropathy is such a puzzling problem. Once again, I have been blown away because Jake responded to me without his CI. This is probably the most obvious "hearing moment" that he has ever had since his residual hearing has decreased. I slept in yesterday and when I got up Josh and Jake were headed out the door to play (Dad was outside). I noticed that Jake only had on a shirt and underwear and not shorts. I went to the door and called his name and he answered "What Mom?" and I said that he needed to come get his short pants on. He said "okay, I coming." He was in the garage, about 40 feet from me and we couldn't see each other. As I turned to walk back into the house I saw his IMPLANT and HEARING AID were still in the dry pack!!!! I ran back to the door and yelled at my husband "Did you hear that?" to which he said yes. Then I told him that Jake didn't have his equipment on yet. He was just as amazed as I was. HOW DO THEY DO THIS? He has absent OAE's now and still has those moments. He answered a few short questions that I asked with my mouth covered then 2-3 minutes later he was a deaf as the door again and wanting his implant on.
April 2000--Jake's class went to the UPS terminal at the airport to learn about mail and package delivery. He thinks he is so cool because he got to act like the pilot. He wants to fly planes when he grows up now! He keeps saying, "I fly airplane Mommy, look at me!" He is staying busy with school and speech therapy homework, but is progressing nicely.
May 6, 2000--Jake went and had an audiogram on his ear he wears a hearing aid in today. He was very good and cooperative through 99% of the testing........ June 5, 2000--School is finally out after all the makeup days from the snow and hurricanes this past year. We are going to be working on speech and language goals on our own this summer and not have speech therapy, just to see how that goes. We will work on using the "ing" form of verbs, using subjects and pronoun structure in speech and using phrases to describe the functions of objects. After much work, we have finally got the Z sound in words pretty consistently. He talks so much more at home than he does at school and I want to show them how well he does, but as soon as I get the audio or video tape players out he clams up and won't talk!
June 30, 2000--We are very busy trying to get the auditory neuropathy conference planned for next month and Jake is very excited to get to meet all the AN kids that I have told him about that will be there.
250 Hz from 75dB to70dB
500 Hz still at 90dB
1000Hz from 85dB to 95dB
2000Hz from 90dB to 100dB
3000Hz from 85db to 90dB
4000Hz from 75dB to 90dB
6000Hz still at 85dB
8000Hz from 90dB to 85dB
He also had a CI audio that was about the same as the last one, with thresholds of 20-35dB in the booth and an SAT of 0dB. Funny thing was that I couldn't hear that one! I thought he was guessing when he put the peg in the board and the audi said "No, he heard it, I said something". She did it again and he heard it again...neither me nor the SLP heard them.
He scored 32% on words and 69% on phonemes on the PBK testing....up from pre CI of 8% and 49% . He had several errors due to those darned missing teeth again! I sure will be glad when they come back in.
