Updates - ENT and Lost Opportunity

Well, I don't know if any of you encountered the huge winter storm that went through a third of the country this week, but we were pretty much center stage. We had 12 hours or so of freezing rain / sleet on the very day of our ENT appointment. Needless to say, we've rescheduled. Now we're going to try next Tuesday instead.

It seems like such a pointless endeavor. Ava is going to hate it. We might not find out anything useful at all. And I feel like she can hear - why am I even putting us through this? Surely her receptive language wouldn't be pretty much normal if she had a hearing loss. Surely she wouldn't ask about the car driving by outside, or the big bang (caused by her brother) from the other room if she can't hear.

On the other hand, she hangs out right in front of the television when it is on. Occasionally she doesn't respond to her name or a request (What child doesn't?). And we need to be sure there isn't some subtle kind of hearing loss that could be affecting her understanding of speech and the various speech sounds. I would feel pretty silly if I spent all this time worrying about apraxia to later discover it's something entirely different. We just have to be sure. It looks like apraxia. In fact, it looks more and more like apraxia every day. But I have to eliminate other possibilities. And so we'll try the ENT. Wish me luck. (Difficult child. Grumble, grumble.)

I also posted the other night about my mis-communication with the local apraxia expert. We'll call her Ms. J. Well, I got lucky there. At first, she did tell me that she had filled her appointment slots. I wrote back to her with a very nice email asking her to let me know if any were open for her next clinic weekend and apologizing again for the mix-up. She wrote back and offered me a early morning appointment at 8am. She was willing to come in early just to see us. Since Ava and Michael have taken to waking up at about 6:20 in the morning these days, getting to an 8am appointment is easy. I was grateful she offered and I'm so excited. I'll let you know how things go and what Ms. J thinks of Ava's speech after we meet with her.