Otosclerosis

About 4 years ago, my mom wondered if O would qualify for the speech preschool that is offered at our elementary school because her speech was so hard to understand. So I called and made an appointment to get her speech tested. They also checked her vision and hearing at the same appointment. The speech lady said her speech was just fine, it would catch up as she got older but nothing was technically behind.  But the next week I got a phone call from the hearing lady that said O had failed the hearing test and could we please bring her in for further testing. Sure, I said.... So we went and had the district audiologist test her hearing further and found that she had some low frequency hearing loss. Not a big deal he says. Its a little strange because no one else in the family has any loss, but it won't affect her. Let's test her again in a few months.

So we retest again, and it has gotten worse. So he starts getting baffled. He checks her after another 6 months, then refers me to an ENT for an MRI and even further testing.

So after the MRI, the ENT notices some calcification of the little bones in O's left ear showing a reason for the hearing loss. Basically arthritis in the little tiny bones. They aren't transmitting the sound properly. So lets see if it gets worse or if it stays the same. He checks her in another 6 months, then another 6 months and another 6 months. And another 6 months. And her hearing stabilizes after a few, then gets worse again. So he refers us to ANOTHER ENT in Salt Lake City. A world known ENT that specializes in these types of cases. So we went down and saw him this March and he says, yup, it's otosclorosis. We've got to operate. So we had a Stapedectomy in the end of April for this poor kid.

They marked which year to operate on. O wanted to see the mark...

before the operation

She wanted to see what it looked like with the cotton ball and bandaid...

She's had quite the adventure this summer. She got a prosthetic stapes bone (the bone in the middle ear that looks like a stirrup...) and her hearing is slowly getting better. She went from a 24 the day before the surgery to a 10 one month after surgery (her right ear was at a 4 after the surgery, if that gives any indication to how these numbers work...I'm still learning....). I'm excited to go back in September to see how much it has improved. The kid wasn't able to get her ear wet for a month after her surgery (before her appointment) and then another month after her follow-up. So she's been really excited to go to the splash pads and everything since July 4 now that she can get  her ear wet.

It has been a learning experience for our family. And we're still baffled at where this came from - no one in either family has shown signs of hearing loss, except the usual old age hearing loss or the selective hearing loss when someone is ignoring me. So we still have lots of questions, but we're glad that O is improving so much!!