13/01/14 - Speech review

Ellie needs to have a review done with all of her specialists at important milestones. 12 months is one of them. We got the letter for her speech review in the mail last week, but Sarah, our speech pathologist was on holidays. She called today, and like always, she was happy to do the review over the phone, rather than dragging us down to Hobart.

I broke the bad news about Ellie's cancelled surgery. Last time we saw Sarah was the day after Ellie stopped breathing during surgery, and she had said then that we were walking a fine line to avoid massive speech delays. She will be organising for Ellie to have intensive therapy after her repair, to try and get her back to standard speech. Usually clefties don't need much in the way of therapy until they are three years old, but because Ellie's repair is so delayed she is getting used to how her mouth works now, and the challenge will be to break her from her current habits and patterns.

We had a chat about the grommets too, and I asked if they are really necessary from a speech perspective, given that her hearing loss was limited to begin with. Unfortunately she thinks they are though, so I guess I have to let them stay in. I'm still not 100% convinced though. She is going to organise some extra hearing tests for us, to check how things are in there right now before we make any decisions.

Last week I started teaching Ellie baby sign language, as a way for her to communicate with us. Sarah was excited, and said she was going to suggest it to us if we hadn't had our repair surgery! So points to me for being awesome! 

I have to admit, I got off the phone feeling pretty down and out. I was hoping that the news would have been a  bit more positive, but at least we have a plan in place. I've had to change our health insurance extras to allow us a higher level of cover for speech therapy, because our local free clinic won't be able to over the intensive level of therapy that she will need.

I guess like everything on this journey, we just wait and see how it goes. Ellie might never have perfect speech, but she will one day be able to talk to us. One day.