Sounds Like Weather

I started this blog shortly after David and I were married in 2008.  We were far from family and just beginning a new adventure through medical school in Loma Linda, CA.  A blog seemed like a good place to record our experiences and to help our families stay "in the know" on the goings-on of our lives.  I did my best to faithfully and regularly post.  Then, as our Pittsburgh fellowship year began, I dropped off the face of the earth.  Partly, this was because I needed to pour myself into my side hustle as a book lady in order to keep a roof over our head and food on the table, and the other part was that I was embarking on homeschooling little Kindergartener Jack for the first time.  Needless to say, Mama ran out of time for blogging.  This and the growing nature of social media with its instant posts replaced my need to write.

BUT

Here I am again.  There is something incredible about reading past entries which reflect my excitement for the future and sometimes my fears and doubts.  Looking back, I see how God was orchestrating my good through each trial and triumph He led me through.  When God was leading Joshua and the Israelites into the Promised Land (finally), He commanded them to set up a stone marker.  When their children asked them what the marker was for, they were to recount what God had done. My purpose in writing this series of posts is to set up a stone marker for Cole to read when he gets older.  I want him to know the incredible ways God went before him and with him through his deafness as a child.  The Lord has been near.  He has accomplished much, answered prayers, comforted, and guided us through the past year and we have full confidence that He has MUCH in store for our boy in the future.

So let's start at the very beginning.

When Cole was born (Feb 2016), he passed his newborn hearing screening.  We were given every cause to believe that his hearing was perfectly normal, and it may have been at that point.  Cole developed at the normal pace, gaining language at the same pace as his brothers and thriving as a little guy.  Starting when he was 3.5 or so, we noticed that we constantly had to ask him to stop yelling, but this was easy to chock up to the fact that he is the 3rd born boy in a very noisy household.  Our frustration with his yelling was building a bit during his 4th year and I was noticing that I was getting near daily headaches as a result of his yelling.  

But on Saturday, July 25, 2020, we were completely knocked off our feet by an incident in the kitchen. Dave was doing dishes and listening to some music on his earbuds.  Cole asked him what was in his ears and Dave said, "Here, let me show you."  He placed the right ear bud in Cole's ear and he just gave Dave a funny look and said he didn’t hear anything. Dave checked to hear that music was still playing and tried the left ear. Cole said, "Cool...music." Going back to the right, he said "It sounds like the weather."  Dave said, "What do you mean?"  Cole replied with a low, rumbling sound."

[Cole, when you read this someday, I want you to see God's hand in this moment.  Daddy could have placed the left ear bud in your ear first and we wouldn't have known there was a problem on your right ear.  God is Sovereign.  He rules over all of His Creation, even Daddy's choice to put the right ear bud in your ear first.]

We were able to schedule an audiology appointment for the following Thursday.  At the time, our audiologist here at Walla Walla Clinic was Dr. Lydia Rogers who formerly worked at Seattle Children's Hospital and is a pro with little kids.  Cole and I masked up and went to test his ears.  Cole went into a little sound booth and had earphones placed in each ear.  First they tested his left ear as a baseline.  Whenever he heard a sound, he would announce whether he heard a Daddy bird (low tones), a Mama bird (middle tones), or a Baby bird (high tones) and then placed a peg in a color board.  Left ear was totally normal.

As they began testing his right ear, they had to play loud "masking," white noise sounds in his left ear.  They had to play the sounds very, VERY loudly into his right ear and without the masking, his left ear would have heard the sounds residually.  Dr. Rogers remained quiet as she worked.  I could see that he wasn't hearing what she was playing, but didn't understand the full extent of what she was finding.  At the end of the exam, she turned and said, "Cole has profound hearing loss in his right ear."   And even upon hearing that, the word deaf was still the farthest from my mind.  Sometimes "doctor words" meant to soften the blow only confuse.  It wasn't until later that evening that my husband used the words, "stone-cold deaf" to get the idea across to me did I understand the results of the test.

The moments after a hard diagnosis are interesting.  Our brains need time to grapple with new realities.  As the afternoon progressed, we called our families to let them know the news.  The grief was building.  Our boy would never be able to hear the direction a teammate was yelling from, never hear the direction from which a vehicle is approaching, never win at Marco Polo.  And with the grief came the guilt.  Just days before his diagnosis, I called to him from my bedroom to come to me and then scolded him for not listening and instead wandering around the rest of the house.  No, he wasn't being naughty.  He couldn't hear where the sound was coming from.  

As Dave put the boys down for bed, I went outside to close the back gate and was stopped in my tracks by the most beautiful sunset.  God was near.  God said, "Just you wait.  You can't even imagine the beauty I will bring from these ashes.  Cole is mine.  He is beloved.  I am with him and I am with you.  Trust me.  Lean in. I will accomplish all my good pleasure."

Dave and I finished the evening by talking through all the things together and preparing ourselves for next steps which included an ENT appointment with our friend, Dr. Greg Haveman. July 29, 2020 was a pivotal day in our family and in Cole's life.  Everything would be different going forward.