Hearing Aids and Soft Palate Surgery

Yesterday we had an appointment to evaluate the progress of Rylee's soft palate. She has a condition called Velopharyngeal Insufficiency. What it means is that the soft palate does not work efficiently. It is completely there and is working, just not all the way. So, we did 12 weeks of speech therapy to help strengthen the soft palate and then yesterday we had an appointment with her surgeon to re-evaluate the soft palate. After the therapy she is speaking and pronouncing words better, but the soft palate is still not functioning fully. Because of this air escapes out of her nose and gives her nasally speech and makes it so she cannot say certain words. The surgery for this will be on December 14.

While we were there her doctor, Dr. Muntz, had Rylee do her hearing test to see how the surgery went. Unfortunately the surgery was not as successful as we would have hoped. She did show improvements in 4 different pitches but none of the improvement was enough to not need hearing aids. Since the surgery did not improve the right ear enough we have elected to not do the left ear and we will go the route of hearing aids. However, we hope that these are only temporary for the next few years. When she gets older we hope to do another surgery where Dr. Muntz will completely replace the third hearing bone that is causing the problems. The trick is that post surgery she has to be nearly completely still for close to a week post surgery, so she has to be at an age to understand the importance of laying still.

Today we went and met with her audiologist about getting her hearing aids. Her audiologist talked about a few different brands, but we have decided on the one pictured below. We let Rylee pick the color of the hearing aid and she wanted the light pink. She will get her hearing aids on the 19th of this month and wear them all waking hours of the day. She will not wear them when she sleeps, swim, takes a bath, and even when we come her hair. We are anxious for how she will adjust to them and to see the changes in our sweet little girl.