Audiologist appointment

This morning Evan saw the audiologist for a routine mapping. He hasn't had a mapping in a long time, so its been a while since he had to have the coils on his head without things working.

He's at that age where he knows when they're broken, and it really frustrates him. Naturally he was very annoyed this morning. They were able to eventually get the information they required, and new maps were programmed. The new map is very similar to the old map. I don't really have exact details on what changed. Our current audiologist doesn't explain things like are other one does. Our original audiologist is coming back from maternity leave in May, just in time for the next mapping.

After the mapping we had to go to the lab. They call it a lab, but its not the kind of lab you may be imagining. No test tubes or microscopes. There's a special computer, different connectors, and a bunch of other stuff that I haven't bother to ask about yet. Evan is part of a study. That's how he was able to receive bilateral implants. So every time we see the audiologist he visits the lab. It doesn't hurt, they basically just attache their coils to his head and measure brain stimulation with a special cap that goes on his head. It tells them how well he's hearing, and they can compare his old results with new results. The brain answers more questions on its own then his mouth could.

Evan really wasn't in the mood for the lab today, so the two technicians just played with him for a bit and then we went home.

That's it for now. :)

Broken

A few days ago Evan had a temper tantrum and his right "ear" fell off, that sort of got in the way of his little episode and he through it against something pretty hard. What ended up happening was the little connector on the end of the coil broke off inside the processor. All that was left on the end of the coil were some brass pins that are normally hidden by the black connector. I tried without luck to extract the broken piece from the processor, so i ended up gently inserting the pins where they should go. Thankfully that worked, but only as a temporary fix. I called Cochlear right away to order new parts, they had to contact our audiologist to get the MAP file for his right processor so they could program it and send it over to us.

The coil was very lose in its temporary home so i tried some superglue to hold it in place. That's something you never want to try unless you're desperate, which i was! That held for a day so we ended up using scotch tape. We should have used duct tape lol.

Cochlear is an amazing company, they didn't charge us for this, even though its obviously not a warranty issue. It would have cost us over $1000 to replace the processor, $200+ for the coil.