Dr. Hashasaki called to say that Christopher’s cochlea are shaped correctly, so that won’t be a problem for surgery. I mentioned to him that we would love to get Christopher in for surgery in April… We’ll see if that happens…
We went back to UVa yesterday for a final set of tests before his surgery. Our friends David and Rebecca were kind enough to let us stay with them the night before. It was a real pain since we weren’t allowed to give Christopher any food after midnight, or any liquids after 6am. The reason is that they were going to put him under general anesthetic.
There were two planned procedures: a CT scan to check the structure of his inner ear, and a test to see which of his auditory nerves responds the best to electrical stimulation. Unfortunately, the machine for the latter test was not working, so they said they would do it on the day of surgery. We also asked them to draw blood for a genetic test to see if that’s the cause of his hearing loss.
Anyway, back to our day: we got there pretty early, but it was another couple of hours wait before they could finally begin the procedure. Apparently there was a holdup in anesthesiology. When they finally got us in, they had Dorothy hold him as they put the nitrous oxide on him. Once he was out, they hustled us out of the room while they did the scan.
We waited in the waiting room for a while. Then Dorothy heard a baby’s cry and said, “I think that’s him!” She jumped up and checked, and sure enough it was. The scan only took a couple of minutes (basically they sedate him so that he won’t move around too much). Drawing blood took longer, even though he wasn’t wriggling.
Being the bad parents we are, we didn’t have a bottle ready for him. In fact, we didn’t have any formula mix. So we ended up mixing some apple baby food with water. Sigh… Next time we’ll be more prepared.
We still need to go back to UVa one more time to look at different CIs and make a final choice. But we’re leaning toward the Advanced Bionics device. One last thing-we set a day for the operation: May 23rd. They wanted to do it earlier, but we’re going to be out of town for Josh and Gabrielle’s college graduations.
Today we made Valentine’s day cards with Christopher. It was a pretty challenging activity, since he wasn’t exactly a willing participant. He would rather eat the paint and paper rather than put his handprint on the paper. As a result, some of the prints came out “fat” looking because I was pressing his hand down pretty solidly. We had to hold his hands so he wouldn’t go crazy with the paint.
Christopher’s crawling more and more now. It’s usually for short distances, since his back muscles can’t easily lift his super-sized body off the ground. There are a couple of videos in the 7 Months category showing him using a metal strainer to help himself crawl. He puts his belly on it and scoots around.
This extra mobility also means that we’re trying to limit his movements to the baby-proofed living room and kitchen. He’s pretty determined though, and has figured out that pulling on the standing gates provides a way out.
Christopher has been jumping in his crib lately. When he first started doing it, I thought that maybe he’d hit his chin on the rail. But there was nothing I could do about it, short of putting a helmet on him.
Well, sure enough, I heard a thud, followed by much crying. I think he bit his tongue. On the other hand, I notice that he now jumps with his head well back… I guess pain is a pretty good teacher.