For the last few months we’ve been working on getting Fulton to start talking. The concern for his lack of speech came up by his pediatrican when we took him for a wellcheck back in August. We decided to work harder with him and if he didn’t show marked progress by the end of October I’d start looking into the next steps.
We have an appointment this Friday with the Early Childhood Intervention program to have him evaluated and assessed for a speech delay. At their recommendation and because there is a history of hearing loss on my side of the family, we had his hearing checked last Friday.
They performed a couple of tests on him. The first was a hearing test to make sure he is hearing the pitches a person of normal hearing should hear. The high pitch was the only one that was below normal. However, the physician assistant said since it’s a subjective test, it could be that it was Fulton’s first time having such a test or he was bored or distracted when they were doing that pitch. So we’ll know better when he has the test done again.
The second test was a typanometry. This objective test measures how energy is transmitted in the middle ear. In a healthy individual, the maximum sound transmitted happens when the pressure inside the middle ear equals the pressure outside. Fulton results were below normal on his typanogram. This means that the pressure inside his middle ear is different than what’s outside his ear. The audiologist said you can liken this to when you’re in an airplane and your ears need to pop. This is how Fulton is hearing right now.
When the physician assistant (PA) examined his eyes, she said he has allergies and it could be causing the pressure difference. So he is temporarily on a nasal spray to relieve his allergies. We’re due back in 6 weeks to retest him. If there is no difference, the PA will talk to us about putting tubes in his ears.
In the meantime, we’ll have the evaluations done on Friday and try to find out what the big picture is and how best to proceed to get Fulton’s speech in gear.
