Go BAERs!

Today Maria had her 3rd BAER (brain auditory e?? response) today, along with a brain MRI and a spine (lumbar) MRI. Don't know the results of the MRIs yet, but the audiologist came out and talked to use about the BAER results. He was very excited about the improvements since August. For the 1st time, he got a response from the 5th wave (certainly not the exact words he used), which means that her brainstem was processing the sound! The 5th wave was flat in both of her last hearing tests. He told us we don't need to bother with the hearing aids for a while; he wants to check her in the booth with and w/o aids before deciding whether to keep trying the aids or not.

He did say he had some bad news, however. In late May, he's retiring and moving to Costa Rica. Naturally, we told him how selfish that was. He assured us we're in good hands there (yea, whatever, he's by FAR the best audiologist in the joint). First the speech therapist, now the audiologist. Have they no shame?

When Manolis and I went into the recovery room (Uncle Andy had to stay in the waiting room because it was crowded in recovery, it was pretty scary. Maria was on oxygen, haning a hard time breathing and waking up. She had been under for quite a while and I think it was hard on her - both the anesthesia and the intubation. Pretty freaky! After quite some time, she was breathing and feeling better, so they finally let us leave. Long, exhausting day, but the good news makes it not seem quite so bad....