To sum it up: Robin's hearing is good. And the fact that it continues to be good, now, 5 months after the first ALGO test, makes it again less likely that it will go bad later. Not impossible, but less likely.
All in all, the day was exhausting. It started of good, with awesome weather for the 3rd day in a row. Our appointment was at 1pm, so I even went for a jog in the park, while Patty fixed us some nice smoked salmon & cream cheese bagels.
The trick however, was to make sure Robin didn't sleep until the test. The BERA test, which measures brain activity while acoustic pulses are sent to the ear, requires a deep sleep. Otherwise the pads pick up interference from other parts of her brain. So, I am now officially the bad guy. Robin wanted to go to sleep badly around 11:30, so I started to shake her, sing to her loudly, and eventually poked her in the ribs every now and then. All for the greater good, but still...
Luckily our efforts paid off, but I must say, the last 30 min. were among the longest in my life ;) The test went very well, but still took approx. 90 minutes. With very well, I mean, Robin slept sound through the whole ordeal. The test itself is all gibberish to the untrained eye, and even the audiologist needs to look at all sorts of reference material before any result can be shared.
After that came the OAE test, which is much simpler, with immediate results, and is very similar to what all babies in Holland get within the first 4 days of their life (an hearing test is taken together with the blood sample for the Guthrie card / hieleprik). We saw immediately that the little dots on the screen did not fit within the reference lines. That sent our anxiety through the roof. While BERA measures electronic signals produced by the brain in response to noises, the OAE only tests the middle and inner ear (so not the nerves and brainstem). The OAE showed hearing loss of approx. 30dB and 40dB on the left and right side respectively. But, the audiologist said afterwards that it is all due to fluid in Robin' s middle ear, like so many babies and infants have. Nothing uncommon, just something that impairs her hearing and thus affects the test.
After a 15 min. wait, the results from the BERA test confirmed the findings from the OAE: hearing is good, only impaired by fluid in her ear.
Sigh.
We got a referral to a KNO (Throat/Ear/Nose) doctor, which is standard practice. He or she will determine if action should be taken to get rid of the fluid. Similar to Feline before
her surgery, Robin's hearing is now comparable to listening while under water. In the long run, this is not good of course. But often, the fluid will disappear when she grows older. She is yet too tiny/young anyway for tubes.
In the end, we made it to the teras around 5:30pm and toasted to our brave, beautiful, amazing, kick-ass baby girl with a nice cold beer.
Thank you as always for your thoughts wishes and prayers. Another test down, who-knows-how-many to go ;)
