Activation Day!

Today was a very long day. Mommy woke up at about 2:30 AM to get the diaper bag packed and make sure we had everything we needed for this special day. Isaac woke up at about 4:00 AM and both Daddy and Mommy were shocked at how happy he was to be waking up so early. We went into his room and he sat up, made the sign for jump and stood up in his crib and began jumping. Isaac was certainly more awake than us! We got him dressed, packed up the Explorer and headed over to Granny's house to pick her up. We finally left Granny's house for Philadelphia at 5:22 AM. The trip to Philly normally takes us about 3 hours with the traffic, but I guess we left early enough to avoid most of it since we got to CHOP in record time....2 hours! We were at the appointment about 45 minutes early!

Isaac's appointment was at 8:00 AM and the whole thing was quicker than we expected. Kevin Franck programmed Isaac's speech processors with the information they gathered at Isaac's surgery and then put the implant on Isaac's head. He made sure everything was working ok before he allowed any sounds to go through the implant. We put Isaac in a high chair because he was running around the room so much. He loved the little cars that Kevin gave him to play with. He was making them crash into each other.

I'm not so sure that Kevin allowed any computer beeps to go through Isaac's implant. I think he just turned the microphone on really low...so low that Isaac couldn't tell right away. He kept gradually turning up the volume and Isaac stopped pushing the cars around so much. I think he realized that they made noise! Then Kevin turned the implant off for a little bit and Isaac got louder and played rougher with the cars. Then Kevin turned the implant on again and Isaac stopped playing and looked around. Kevin turned the volume up a little more and Isaac got really upset. He started crying, so I took him out of the high chair and held him. Kevin turned the volume down but Isaac was still crying a lot! We had to take him out of the room and walk around a little bit to calm him down. He still had the implant turned on.

Isaac wouldn't go back in the room, so Granny walked with him in the hallways while Daddy and Mommy learned more about the different programs Isaac had saved on his processor. Right now Isaac has 4 programs and 1 is the softest, 4 is the loudest. We kept turning up the volume on program 1 after we left CHOP and Isaac didn't really seem to notice. We began the trip back home.

Overall, the activation went well. We are convinced that Isaac can hear. Now the hard part is beginning. We have to help him make sense of what he hears. A few times when we would call his name, he would turn to us, but not consistently. I know that will come with time. We are so happy. It was a long and tiring day, but Isaac can hear. Praise God!