Switch on Day

We went into switch on day without huge expectations – just in case we were disappointed.

When we first arrived, Neil the audiologist went through a serious of mapping type tests. This involved playing different tones and looking for Taylor’s response. Through conditional testing, Taylor has got very use to looking towards the ‘puppets’ which are housed in black box. When she hears the noise and looks towards the puppet, the light comes on and the puppet (usually a monkey), claps it’s hands. Taylor always looks very proud of herself when she gets it and gives herself a clap!

Finally came the moment we had been waiting for when they actually ‘activated’ the implant. The put it on very quietly at first and Taylor didn’t seem to react. Then as they brought the volume up, she definitely reacted to sounds. As we were saying her name (we were to the left of her), she kept on looking at the puppets! …. As she has been so conditioned to do!

They performed a number of tests and then Neil look a tamborine behind her and hit it with a stick. She looked around straight away. He then hit the tamborine ‘bells’ with the stick which made a very unpleasant sound and Taylor cried straight away – not liking it one bit!

We were then given instructions for how to use the remote and change the batteries. We were given a huge amount of stuff including some lovely toys for Taylor.

We were then meant to have a habilitation session with Joanne, but they felt that Taylor had been through enough for the day, so we headed over to the playgroup where we met a couple of other kids with implants and their Mum’s.

Taylor was very keen to get outside and play and when I went out onto the veranda and called her name as she was going past – she looked straight around at me, which was so rewarding!

On the way home she pulled the processor and magnet off (for the first time), so I stopped and took it off her. She was asleep within minutes!

Once we got home she went through stages of taking it off, but generally kept it on for some good amounts of time – generally around an hour or so. She would occasionally knock it off accidentally and I just kept on putting it back on. At one point she ran away from me and really didn’t want it back on so I just distracted her with something else and was able to easily get it back on.

She was extremely taken with her favourite Wiggles DVD (Pop Goes the Wiggles) which held a whole new fascination for her with sound!

We went down to school and Caitlyn was very excited to see Taylor with her ‘new ear’. The kids in her class were all very fascinated also!

The rest of the day went well with her taking it out a few times, but generally pretty good.