Ellie, Can You Hear Me?

"How is her hearing?" the professionals would ask, right off the bat, whenever I got into a discussion about Ellie's speech delays.

"Oh great! She notices the littlest of noises from outside, she pulls me to the window to tell me she heard a dog or a truck or a bird. Her hearing definitely isn't the problem," I'd assure them.

So, guess who failed her hearing test this morning?

I feel like a freakin' genius.

Well, she has a cold right now, and they said with the pressure in her ears, that her ear drums were hardly moving and she wasn't registering much below 25 decibels. So, we come back in a few weeks, when her nose is cleared up, and try again. So, we didn't really learn anything new, except that even when she doesn't have an ear infection, she may be dealing with hearing problems due to pressure. I might make another appointment with the ENT (we were just there yesterday with Annie), but I don't know what they can do really. She can't get tubes yet . . . they'd said if she'd had one more ear infection by the end of January, we'd do tubes, but she's been miraculously infection-free this season. She did have two infections back in fall, but none this winter . . . trust me, I know . . . I've taken her in three or four times absolutely convinced that her grumpiness and lack of sleep was due to another ear infection, but so far it's just been a big waste of multiple co-pays. (Annie was having pretty severe hearing problems right before her second set of tubes, but with constant ear infections and a history of tubes clearing them up, she was a no-brainer for surgery. Since Ellie's not really getting infections, who knows what options we have . . . ) We'll do the test again in a few weeks and see what happens . . . which Ellie will be happy about! She had the time of her life in the sound booth for the hearing test -- there were barking dog toys, and drum playing teddy bears, and things would light up and start to sing when she'd look towards the sounds . . . she was laughing and giggling the whole time. When we came out of the booth, the audiologist said, "Well, she certainly has joy in her life!" As we were leaving, Ellie ran back to the sound booth, and threw herself against the door, refusing to leave because she just wanted to go back inside and do it again. I assured her we'd be back again soon . . .

Her other tests went great -- vision tests and health histories were all taken care of this morning. Now that all her medical stuff is done with the school district (or, done-ish, since they're not counting this hearing test), they said they'll pass it on to her assigned speech therapist, and we'll move on from there . . .

Now I'm patiently waiting. (Why hasn't anyone called yet?!)