by Kristi Bell
11/1/2009
Our journey began Feb. 12, 2003. I was admitted to the hospital for high blood pressure and for an induction the next day. I was very swollen and sick. Early the next morning I was induced, and Brett Randal Bell was born. He weighed more than six pounds and was an overall healthy baby. My husband, Randy, and I were overjoyed to have both a girl, Brynne, who was 19 months old at the time, and a boy.The nurse came into our hospital room the next day to let us know that Brett had failed his routine newborn hearing screening. She told us that our pediatrician would refer us to Arkansas Children's Hospital Ear, Nose and Throat clinic. When we took Brett to the clinic, the doctor recommended ear tubes to ensure Brett did not have any fluid from his birth in his ears. He received them when he was 3 months old. After the tube surgery, Brett saw the audiologists at Children's. The ear tubes had not helped his hearing, so the doctors performed an Auditory Evoked Response (AER) Evaluation to determine the extent of Brett's hearing loss. The AER results showed that Brett had a profound sensineural hearing loss in his left ear but had hearing within normal limits in his right ear. In other words, Brett was completely deaf in his left ear. I do not think that Randy and I understood the full extent of the diagnosis at first. It took a while to let everything sink in. A million questions were going through my mind: What will we do? Will he be able to talk? What are his needs going to be? How will we meet them?  |  |  I do not think that Randy and I understood the full extent of the diagnosis at first. It took a while to let everything sink in. |  |  |
In October 2003, we took Brett back to the ACH audiology department for a follow up evaluation. We saw a wonderful audiologist named Jan Stroud, who is still our audiologist today. She explained every test that she performed on Brett. She evaluated Brett's hearing once more and felt we needed another AER. This time, Brett was diagnosed with a moderate sensineural hearing loss in his right ear in addition to the profound loss in his left ear. He was fitted for a hearing aid at 8 months old.More questions sprang to mind: Is he going to be okay? Will he be able to play sports? Where will we get help? What kind of life will he have with only one ear with a hearing aid to hear everything? Blossoming
I have learned to take everything one step at time. I have also learned to celebrate every victory no matter how small. We lean a lot on God, knowing that this is the path He chose for Brett and our family. Brett started speech therapy shortly after receiving his hearing aid. He started to say some words - "Kickey" for Mickey Mouse, "Dada," "Mama." With our daughter starting preschool, I started looking for a new place to provide speech therapy for Brett. Several people recommended ACCESS Group and Brett started speech therapy there in March 2006.
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