On November 11, 2005, my wife Amanda gave birth to our 3rd child, Mercy Elizabeth. The delivery was by C-section because of a breech presentation, but otherwise, everything appeared normal. When I was allowed to go visit our baby while she was under the heating lamp, I noticed something wasn't quite right. I saw that her ears were very small and that she had no visible ear canal openings.
This condition is called microtia (see link), which is very rare. It happens in about 1 of every 10,000 births. She has it in both ears, rarer still.
We were subsequently sent to a host of medical specialists... the poor girl was poked and prodded everywhere and subject to a battery of tests. They also found out she had a slight heart murmur.
Anyway, after months of running around, we learned that Mercy has a treatable condition; there is no known cause, it was just a mutation. It just happens, one
doctor told us.
Testing showed that her hearing appeared to be reduced by about 50%. We noticed early on that she didn't pay attention to far off sounds like trains and birds whistling. One could easily walk up to her from behind without her noticing.
Mercy would need special hearing aids, called bone-conduction hearing-aids. These would not fit inside her ears like regular aids since she lacked those openings.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment