It has been over 3 weeks since I blogged and my life has changed in that time. I haven't desired to blog because I am still struggling to come to terms with what has happened and I don't want to acknowledge it as real. 

On June 5, my 10 year old son woke up completely deaf in his right ear and suffering from vertigo and tinnitis.  A trip to the pediatrician gave us a diagnosis of possible inner ear infection and a round of antibiotics.  The vertigo improved fairly quickly and we thought we were moving forward, but by Wednesday of the following week he still couldn't hear anything and after a few people expressed concern I started doing research on the internet.  What I found panicked me and I called a neurotologist from our old church at night to ask him about what I had found.  He confirmed my fears and said to get my son to his office first thing Thursday.  An audiogram showed absolutely no hearing in his right ear (at over 100 db).  Daniel was diagnosed with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss - a condition whereby you lose hearing suddenly - often when waking up in the morning.  It can range from moderate to profound loss and there are many possible causes.  Unfortunately in 90% of the cases, a cause is never identified and it is considered ideopathic.  Sometimes hearing returns within a few days on it's own, sometimes it never does.

We started treating him aggressively.  To have any hope of reocvery through medication it must be started ASAP.  They won't even bother treating you if your loss started over 2 weeks before you come in. Daniel went on large doses of oral steroids and was given an intratympanic injection of steroids through the eardrum. That is the treatment most thought to help in these cases. He also took an antiviral as it is thought that often SSNHL is a result of a viral infection and that it is a re-infection of the chickenpox virus.  But we were told from the outset not to get our hopes up.  SSNHL usually affects those between 30-60 yrs. and the recovery rates in children are very low.  The fact that he had vertigo is a negative indicator of recovery as is his profound loss.  Last week we had an MRI to check for a possible tumor or ear malformation that would make hearing loss from a bump on the head more likely.  Nothing was found on the MRI, nor did any of his bloodwork show anything.  Daniel had taken a few blows to the right side of his head and ear in the 5 weeks preceding it - the last one just 3 days before he lost his hearing, but the dr. doesn't think any of them could be the culprit.  You can lose hearing from a blow to the head but usually it would be from a car accident or something that ended in fairly serious concussion or skull fracture.  He was scuffling with his brother and actually hit himself with his fist when defending himself from his brother beaning him with a pillow case - hard to believe he could do that much damage.  So that leaves us with ideopathic sudden hearing loss - no identifiable cause.

Last week he had another audiogram and there was some improvement but not a lot. He went from hearing absolutely nothing to hearing at 90 db.  That is still profoundly deaf.  This week I tried having him talk to me on the phone using his right ear and he couldn't hear a thing, so things can't have improved very much, and from all the extensive reading I've done, usually the gains are made in the first 2 weeks, sometimes up to a month.

So I am struggling with having a child who already struggles with attention issues, and now has a further impediment to hearing and paying attention. You would not know it to see him.  He hears perfectly out of his other ear and can follow conversations, hears me calling him around the house etc., but he cannot localize sound - so he doesn't know where I am calling him from.  He is my most active and coodinated kid - good and aggressive at sports, but he is impulsive, so I worry about him running into the road without looking and not hearing a car. If his hearing doesn't improve any more they say he is a candidate for a cochlear implant which would give him back stereo hearing, but that involves a fairly invasive procedure of screwing a rod into your skull, not to mention it is horrifically expensive, and then I wonder whether my active child would smash it by mistake playing basketball or something.  So many emotions are roiling around inside me now and I am struggling.  I am especially concerned about his constant tinnitis that I am afraid will make him go insane if he has to deal with it for the next 70 years. I want a do over.  I want to redo the last 2 months and see if we can change things.  We have another audiogram in 2 weeks. I am still praying for a miracle, but it is looking more and more like that is not God's plan.  I need strength and peace - I am exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally right now, just drained and depressed.