Hear, hear!!

And hear some more!! At long last, our son is getting an FM system to use in his classroom - a year after the audiologist first recommended it. Last year, apparently, the powers that be didn't want to ante-up . . . but now, going into the final term of Grade 4 for our son, it has been determined that he will be "lost" in the classroom without some sort of assistance.

Duh. That's a no-brainer, if you ask me. But then, I'm his mother.

The school is responsible for the device - which is like a hearing aid, but is not a hearing aid. It fits in his ear in a similar manner, complete with a doodad behind his ear, but it goes in the hearing ear, not the deaf one. There's no hearing to aid in the deaf ear, so that would be pointless. The teacher will wear a little microphone. What it will do, is amplify the teacher's voice, so that he will be less distracted by the other classroom noises, and hopefully be better able to pay attention and get his work done.

He had a sound field system in Grade 1, and although it worked, it was a distraction for the rest of the class. Then we looked at getting him a BAHA (bone anchored hearing aid), which would pick up the sounds from the right side of his head, and send it, via his skull, to the left ear. That too, worked, after a fashion. But he found the robotic quality of the sound distracting, and it gave him a headache. Constantly.

For those of you who don't know, our son has profound unilateral hearing loss ~ his right ear is completely deaf, but his left is absolutely perfect! My mother had this too, and seemed to function well. Of course, she was born in 1946, so there wasn't a whole lot of support for deaf people back when she was a kid. Certainly not for someone with such a profound unilateral deafness.

He should get it sometime within the next month - he had the mold taken on Tuesday, so depending on how long it takes to make the device, he could have it in April or May. I'm guessing that Easter is throwing a monkey wrench in any plans to get him fitted for it in April.

I'll let you all know how it goes. Thanks for reading!!