NW Regional gave Kairi a loaner pair of hearing aids. We had to pay $75 for the molds that go into her ear, but the rest of the unit was given to us as a loner until we get the cochlear implant.
You are probably wondering why she has hearing aids on when she can't hear anything. We thought the same, but NW Regional told us that it has benefits for Kairi even if she can't hear.
First of all it will get her used to the feeling of having something on her ears so that the transition into cochlear implants will be easier for Kairi to handle. This is a great idea since we have a hard enough time keeping a hat on her let alone 2 hearing aids on her ears.
The second reason was that even though she cannot hear in a normal way, being that she only responded to sounds above 90dB, the aids can actually get Kairi used to the hearing process. The believe that with the aids Kairi will probably be able to hear some sort of muffled of mumbling noises. The purpose here being that the aids are there to teach Kairi how to hear a sound and react in an appropriate way. If you hear a sound on the right, then you turn right. This seems natural to us who can hear, but this was actually a learning process we had as we grew up.
The third reason was that they wanted to keep Kairis hearing muscles active. Kairi was found to have active ear drums and the doctors wanted to make sure that they stayed active and not get weak or become inactive. The main reasoning behind this is that if you don't use a part of your body long enough, your brain will stop wasting energy on that part and it will become weak or inactive after time.
After receiving the hearing aids, we had a hard time getting Kairi to keep them on for more than 5 minutes. But after a few months of constant supervision, she is comfortable keeping them on for hours at a time. It just takes a lot of patience.
