Baha

So Kyler can't hear out of his right ear. Their is a device called the Baha that is implanted behind his right ear and then a little speaker is hooked onto this screw thing and it uses bone conduction for him to hear. Did that make sense?

Anyways, basically it's a little speaker that is behind his ear into his bone that sends vibrations to his good ear so he gets to hear everything through his good ear. They can't do the implant until he is 5. So we got a loner Baha. It is on a softband/headband. We just got the device on Friday. Kyler HATES to wear the headband. We are trying to get him accustomed to wearing the headband before we snap on the Baha. The Baha is $5000 so I would hate for Kyler to pull off the headband and ruin the Baha. I would really like to see how it helps Kyler especially at school. The Drs said that he won't notice a huge dramatic change because he can hear 100% out of his left ear.

He explained it like this:

Imagine you are looking at a wall. On one side of you is a t.v. on the other side of you is a sink. If you could only hear out of the ear that is facing the sink you would be able to hear the tv UNTIL the sink was turned on. Then you would only hear the running water. That is how Kyler hears. With the Baha, there would be a speaker on his bad ear that would send the noise to his good ear so he would hear the running water AND the t.v.

Now, he could totally grow up functioning with his one good ear. He would just always have to have that ear facing what he wants to hear. He would have to sit on the left side of the teacher so his good ear faced his teacher. He would have to do things to make up for the bad ear. But, if we decide to do the Baha that would allow him to sit where he wants and still hear the teacher or me or whatever. It would help him. I think that Kyler already has strikes against him with his developmental delays so if his hearing could be one less strike against him then I am all about getting the Baha.

I tried it on. It was awesome. I could be plugging my ears and totally hear everything Ryan was saying because it was through bone conduction. It was pretty nifty I thought.

The problem is getting him to keep it on until we can do the surgery. Also, insurance just told us that the Baha is not covered. No worries, we'll try to appeal and stuff but it's no HUGE concern yet because he's not eligible for the surgery yet.

In essence, I think we're going to do it. Right now we are just attempting to try it out on the soft band but Kyler is not loving it, to say the least. It's not that he minds the actual Baha because he hasn't even tried it yet. He just HATES having the headband on his head. So...let the battle begin. We have the loner Baha for 2 months so hopefully within that time frame we will get a better idea if it really helps him or not. Wish us luck...

Kyler actually wore the headband for 1 whole hour today before grabbing it and throwing it on the concrete. Progress.This is the device that snaps onto the headband.