Cochlear Implant Activation

On Tuesday. Sept 23rd. we had an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic to have Noah's cochlear implant activated. It was a much anticipated day. We went into hoping to see an awesome response from Noah, indicating he could hear. They put the processor and coil on and hooked it up to the computer to program it.  During this process and beyond I replaced the processor and coil it seemed every 2 seconds. It was very frustrating. I was almost in tears thinking that we put Noah through implant surgery and took what little he could hear away from for nothing. They finally got it programmed  and turned him on. We did get a bit of a response but nothing you could catch on video because we were still continuing to replace everything on his head. So there was a lot of in out of hearing for him.Not an ideal situation to get a good response from Noah. It was  very disappointing  to say the least. 

On the way home we stopped at Walmart to find anything that might help keep it on. I picked up a hair band and two sided tape. The hair band spun around and didn't hold the coil in place. The two sided tape worked ok but not great. Then of all things I used some Batman duct tape. It held the coil in place even while Noah rolled on the floor. Shortly after we got home, Emily got home from work and had bought him a new book. To see the joy on his face as she read to him was priceless. Then we tried the video again and we finally got the response we were hoping for. We have since gotten some toupee tape and it works wonders. No more duct tape needed.

On Wednesday, Sept. 24th we went back to the Cleveland Clinic to have his processor tweeked a bit. When we got there they hooked up his processor to the computer so they could check it out internally. This where they check out the wires and nerves they are connected to. During this process Noah started to make his upset sound over and over. We then realized that he was getting upset because during this process they had shut off his hearing. Did you read that right? He was mad because he couldn't hear!!!! How awesome is that? When they were done programming his processor, they turned Noah's hearing back on and he jumped and squeezed my finger. It brought tears to my eyes. My little man can hear!!!!!