One Step Closer?

One Step Closer?

Today (August 24, 2011) Jenna has taken her next step on her long road toward some normalcy. Jenna received her first set of hearing aids today. This comes a little over a week after Jenna receiving her first pair of glasses. According to Jenna both her sight and hearing have been improved, hopefully significantly.


Here's a picture of one of Jenna's new hearing aids.


Here is the pair of hearing aids, and the clip and string that should prevent them from falling of and getting lost or damaged.


Jenna wearing her new glasses and hearing aids.


A sideways view of Jenna wearing her heaing aids.

Jenna was born in Zhu Zhou City in the Hunan Province in China on May 12, 2004 – this was the date on her finding note, presumably written by her birthmother. Jenna was abandoned in a large park when she was 1 ½ months old. She was born with a cleft palate and a large birthmark on her right side of her scalp and neck. Jenna also has a slight deformity of her right ear lobe. Jenna was raised in a local orphanage, where she lived for over three years. Jenna has significant hearing loss in both ears at lower frequencies within the speech range, so we believe her hearing has never been normal. Jenna’s hearing may also have deteriorated due to several untreated ear infections, or it may have been another birth defect. Anyway Jenna has never passed any of the several hearing tests she has been giving since she has been home, but she is not completely deaf. Her cleft palate was surgically repaired while she was still at this orphanage. Just before we traveled to receive Jenna in July 2007, Jenna had an accident at the orphanage where boiling hot water came in contact with one of her arms and burned her, but that has since healed up well.


Jenna when she first came home.

Jenna adapted to our family relatively well. She bonded with Cheryl very fast, and was a bit afraid of me at first (as well as any man), but she eventually accepted me as her father. She got along with her new siblings very well from the start, mostly with her big sister Leah. The first problems with Jenna that we tried to deal with were her ear infections. She was treated with antibiotics and soon had surgery for her 1st set of ear tubes. The infections cleared up eventually, but she has had at least 3 sets of tubes in her ears so far. So that's 4 surgeries so far – 1 in China for her cleft palate, and 3 for ear tubes. For the past few years we have been working with the University of Iowa’s (UIHC) otolaryngology clinic for Jenna’s hearing and speech. Jenna has also received several years of speech therapy, both with a professional speech therapist, and another speech therapist at her school. In 2010 Jenna was evaluated to see where she was at with her mental and physical development, and not surprisingly she was found to be 1 – 2 years behind what was normal for her age.

So together with all of these specialists we have been doing whatever they suggested for Jenna to try to get her caught up to normal (if possible). UIHC (for whatever reason) decided to focus on her speech first. In June 2010 Jenna was to receive a pharyngeal flap surgery (read more here), but her surgeon Dr. Canady discovered Jenna had swollen tonsils and adenoids, so he removed them instead. Then a few months later Jenna received the P-flap surgery. The results were mixed. Jenna’s speech seemed to have improved and her speech therapists definitely noticed improvement, but it’s still hard to understand Jenna’s speech – so not as good as we had hoped.

So now Jenna has had 6 surgeries that we know of so far. This year Jenna has been continuing her speech therapy, but the people at UIHC decided to start focusing on her hearing problem. Her new surgeon, Dr. Kacmarynski suggested that Jenna receive an exploratory surgery on one of her inner ears to see if she could find a problem there, so we set it up (read more here). Before the surgery they gave Jenna a cat scan. From this procedure the doctor decided due to the lack of available space in Jenna’s middle ear, and the narrowness of her ear canals that she didn’t think a surgery would be helpful, so in her opinion it probably wouldn’t be worth the risk, and there was some risk. There is an important nerve that runs nearby that affects hearing and if accidentally damaged could cause some facial paralysis. So we canceled the surgery, wondering what was next.

Next was extensive testing on Jenna’s hearing and a diagnosis that audiologist thought she would be a good candidate for hearing aids. So a little over a month ago I took Jenna to the hearing aid department at the UIHC and got her fitted for hearing aids. Jenna just received them today and already we can see some improvement in her hearing, and she seems happy with them and isn’t bothered with them. Jenna has also been doing a good job of wearing her new glasses. Our son Alex also has to start wearing glasses so now everyone in our family wears glasses but Ryan and I. Hopefully now that Jenna can hear better her speech will improve significantly, enough to where she can be understood by us and everyone else that she interacts with each day. Jenna is such a lovely and sweet girl, I’m anxious to see the day when she can communicate well with everyone. Hopefully we are finally coming to the end of a long, hard road toward normalcy. Our daughter Leah had a long road (with 3 surgeries) to having normal sight, but that’s another story.


Ryan, Jenna, and Alex showing their muscles while helping me assemble their new trampoline last sunday afternoon. Alex got new glasses too but he's not wearing them right now.


Jenna and Ryan on the trampoline.


Leah on the almost finished trampoline. Later I tied down the bottom of the net and they've been jumping on it regularly since then.


Here's the crew at Taco Bell after going to their first school skating party of the year at Super Skate.

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