SHE CALLS THEM HER "hearing maids," or maybe it is "hearing mades"; we may never know for sure.
There's a lot of that with our daughter, Angeliki, 4, who got hearing aids last fall. A lot of things you just don't know, like how this journey will end.
It took more than two years and a series of unpleasant tests before University of Chicago specialists could even settle on a diagnosis for Angeliki. High frequency hearing loss in both ears, the verdict came, with progressive degeneration possible but not certain. No discernible reason for the loss was found, and surgical intervention was not an option. Angeliki would be fitted with hearing aids in both ears.
As I retrospectively considered my little girl's life and personality, the diagnosis explained a lot.
For one thing, Angeliki had the loudest voice of any child I had ever known. Nevertheless, she didn't talk much. She was a little slower to speak than other kids, and what she did say was difficult to comprehend. Although Angeliki was gregarious and outgoing, socially she struggled because she couldn't seem to interact well in a group.
And she had a bizarre reaction to the kinds of noises most of us know to ignore. An engine roaring in the street, the neighbor running a power saw, a vacuum cleaner going upstairs -- these frightened her deeply. She would run and jump into my arms, a look of terror on her face: "What dat noise?!"
She seemed unable to sort out meaningless noise or determine what was supposed to be important for her. She could not gauge what should or should not be frightening.
Most of all, she was an extremely defiant, independent little girl. I referred to this affectionately as her "screw-you" attitude toward life: She would not be moved by any persuasion; she responded with the taciturnity of a boulder to basic requests; and with a steely-eyed gaze and expressionless silence, she would flatly refuse to do what I asked.
Or then again, maybe she just never heard me. I already knew that to get her attention I had to hold her little chin and look right into her eyes. What I didn't know was the extent to which she was reading my lips all along.
And so, the hearing aids.
We chose pink and purple ear molds with bright translucent purple cases, though you can get any color, or combination of colors, you can think of -- even sparkles.
Insurance coverage is spotty regarding children's hearing aids. That is to say, believe it or not, mostly they're not covered. Sure enough, a call to our insurer confirmed this. Despite this glaring failure on the part of insurance companies, parents in our situation must figure out ways to pay for the several-thousand-dollar devices.
When the day for the fitting arrived, we all crowded into a small office: my husband, Angeliki, the audiologist, her assistant and I. Our audiologist began explaining the little devices, so mysterious and fragile-looking. My head spun as she rattled off the information: batteries, battery tester, cases, cleaning, drying, lubricant, storing, and -- wait, she paused in her litany, wait, we're putting them in now. ...
How can I describe the look on my daughter's face when hearing aids were placed in her ears for the first time? Her eyes opened wide with surprise. A small smile began to emerge, as if she had a secret. And not a sound came out of her mouth. She sat up straighter and looked around in awe. You could see the change in an instant. My hand went to my mouth in astonishment, and I began to cry.
"They all cry," the audiologist said.
She read a book then to our little girl about Oliver the elephant that needed hearing aids. "Oliver," my daughter repeated, the first time we ever heard her say the sound of the letter "v."
Surprises came rapidly in the following days. So did our first inklings that this was going to be a long road.
Strangely, Angeliki doesn't always want to hear as much as I want her to. Who wouldn't love to hear everything better all the time? Well, a little girl who has never before experienced a noisy bowling alley at full volume might not. Or maybe someone who has never before endured a grade-school holiday program in an auditorium full of echoes. Or possibly someone who has never had her playtime in the park disrupted by a leaf blower.
It turns out to be a little daunting to be able to hear everything better all the time. Because the microphones on hearing aids for children are not directional, they intentionally pick up all sound so that children may learn to sort out the needful from the extraneous. But this is exhausting work. And it makes a little child sleepy and cranky.
Morning preschool is enough to cause Angeliki to yank the maids out of her ears: "I'm done hearing now," she'll say, handing them to me and running off to play by herself.