It was Friday- and a confluence of events meant that I had two rounds of preschool, and OT evaluation, a meeting with the TOD (teacher of the deaf), and a pediatrician appointment for Matthew. With the virus and the accident from the night before, I decided to cancel preschool and the TOD meeting. And then my Superhero Husband arrived home early from work, to take Matthew to the pediatrician while I feigned consciousness for the visit from the County of Health.
The woman arrived, dropped off the system and the paperwork, and I spent some time figuring out how to remove Nolan's battery doors and replace them with the nifty little "boots" sent by Unitron. The Inspiro receivers plug into the boots, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the set-up wasn't too big on his little ears.
Hearing aid, with "boot" and Phonak receiverThe Inspiro has a monitoring function, and the receivers and transmitter are communicating to each other. Unfortunately, Nolan's hearing aids aren't communicating with the receivers, so the FM isn't working quite yet. I think his hearing aids need to be reprogrammed to allow access by the FM system (most of his hearing aid functions, including telecoil, are currently turned off, due to his age). I have a call in to his audiologist to see if we can get everything up and running soon.
I really can't wait to use the FM System in the classroom and in other noisy environments. For the first time, he'll be able to hear clearly in busy locations.
The entire FM set-up: Transmitter and MicrophoneThanks to Phonak and our local school district, the sound of Nolan's future is ON. We couldn't be more thrilled!
9 comments:
I have that FM system and it sounded very nice
hope U guys have a good luck with it!
All the best for the new journey. Enjoy the change.You seem excited.
Great news for Nolan! Those boots are much smaller than I imagined. In the case of hearing aids, it's a good thing that the advancement of technology includes things getting smaller!
X's audiologist and classroom teacher are not pushing for a personal FM system, as there are only 2-5 kids in a smallish carpeted room. It's a ideal learning situation for deaf kids, similar to JTC. We'll probably wait until next year to investigate further.
How exciting! Can't wait to hear how he does! Christian did beautifully pre-CI with his Phonak FM system---you'll be AMAZED how how much more they pick up!
We're really excited because Nolan is under-amplified (55dB in the lows and 40-45dB in the highs are his AIDED responses- he hits the normal range for 1000-2000Hz only). This should give him an extra boost for hearing voices until we can get the hearing situation sorted out! His classroom is 16 children with tile floors, but luckily the class tends to be low-key!
Hooray! Very exciting, I can't wait to see if Nolan can tell a real difference when the FM system gets turned on. How many hours/days a week will he be going to preschool?
Great news about the FM, and it was interesting to see the boot actually attached to the aid. Presumably we'll use an FM with Ben's CI rather than his hearing aid (when we finally get an FM).
And somehow I missed last Friday's post about the double accident -- what an ordeal for all of you! I hope both boys are recovering from their wounds, you're recovering from your cold, and you're all enjoying a little peace and quiet.
That's so exciting!!!
We have phonak aids, so the set up is a bit different, but I'm sure you're right about having the aids re-programmed.
Tate's (when he was younger) had three settings - normal, one for talking on the phone, and one for his FM - that we could toggle through. And with the FM setting we could choose to have ONLY the FM feeding into the HA (which was rarely used) or to have the FM and the ambient noise both 'on'.
Now he has an additional directional setting for hearing in a noisy environment without the FM. Basically, only the forward-facing part of the mic is working. So if were were eating dinner in a noisy restaurant it would edit out a lot of the ambient noise, but he would have to be facing whoever was speaking.
Anyway, hurray for the FM! It will make a huge difference for him.
I'm a little worried about monitoring which program the HA's are on, but Nolan is a good reporter, so he'll let us know when he can't hear correctly. I do wish his HA had little lights- "green" for on HA mode, "blue" for telecoil or FM, etc. Then we could take a look at his aids and know which program they were in!
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