Eyes and Ears and Lungs, Oh My

I took Maria back to the eye doc today. If her eyes aren't a lot better by Sept 11, then he's going to recommend surgery (lancing the "zits"). Nice, huh? Fortunately, I caught her napping today and put lots of compresses (soaked in chamomile, as requested by her dad and ok'd by the doc) on both eyes for more than 30 minutes. (Couldn't tell any difference at all afterwards, kind of discouraging).

On a brighter note, we got the audiologist's report today, which says "Waves I-III were consistently present and repeatable. Wave V was present for only sporadic stimuli and was small in amplitude. For "click", Wave III was measured down to 30 dB bilaterally. Other results ranged from 4000 Hz, Wave III: 60 dB in left ear and 70 dB in right ear to 500 Hz, Wave V: 40 dB in left ear and 50 dB in right ear. For unmasked bone conduction: no synchronous neural response was recorded at the ouput limits of the equipment (35 dB). In summary, ABR results showed continued slight improvement in synchrony of the auditory pathway for both ears when compared to Maria's March 2006 ABR."

In comparison, Maria's 1st ABR in January 2005 (where they concluded that she was basically deaf) said: "No repeatable Wave V at 90 dB in either ear at 500 Hz to 4000 Hz, same for "click". March 2006 results: 500 Hz, Wave V: 60 dB right ear and 75 dB left ear. Granted, I don't know crap about this stuff, but she was at 60/75 and now she's at 40/50 decibels -- that sounds pretty freakin' good to me.

Interpretation: I think "improved synchrony" means that there appears to be a repeatable pattern of Maria responding to sounds, and it's at softer levels. It also appears that she hears better out of her right ear, but of course being the mom, I don't notice which is better. I still don't get the Hz stuff. And I have no idea what the unmasked bone conduction results mean.

Maria's cough doesn't seem to be getting better. It appears that she gave the cold to her dad, but hasn't managed to infect the rest of us, yet. And so on it goes ... it's not just one thing, it's the other and the other and and and........ Today I managed to do the warm compresses once (not the desired 4 times), eye ointment once (but will give her 2nd dose when I go to bed), the stander, and 3 meals (breakfast at 11:30am); plus she got one or two naps and I got a little bit of work done; but she only drank 21 oz fluids, no hearing aids, no Baby Einstein, no music, no crawler or resonance board or self-feeding or Nasonex or sign language or open cup or bath or anything else resembling therapy... Granted, I got about 3 hrs sleep last night and took her to the doc today and was supposed to be working, but sometimes I wonder if some of the therapists and docs realize that. Thank goodness for Sue and Uncle Andy and their success in doing so much more than ma and pa.

Speaking of pa, he's still "acting" in Kingdom. This time he was in some scene with Hummers and SUVs. Tomorrow they're going to be doing some night shooting. Can't wait to see the movie!