But not wearing his left ear for 2 weeks turned out to be more dramatic to him than I thought! At first he cried, not wanting for me to take the processor of his ear- so I left the broken one on. Then he would point to his ear—trying to explain but there is something wrong.  After a few days, we just did not put it back again, so he forgot about it.

SO Tuesday I made the call and they phoned to bring him in immediately for a loan processor. When we put the earpiece on, he just cried hysterically, and I felt so so sorry for him. As if saying: “ You switch me off for 2 weeks, and then you give me full blown volume- Shame on you!” So we turned the volume down on the specific setting to 2! Just when I thought he is happy with his second ear—and he has adapted, we start all over again. (At least that is how it feels like!) How long before he is back to normal sound again? Only time will tell…

I must say I am really relieved to see something is working. Apparently it’s quite hard to tell at this stage how much he is hearing, or better said: how much his brain is relating to ’sound’.
I can really see progress every single day.

What’s more, eversins Juan got his implant, he started leopard crawling, and today he got up on all fours and started creeping!!!!

The audiologist is extremely happy with his response to sound. Today they tested the nerve ‘ response levels’ again– which they have done in theater the  last time.  They test this at three months and then again at six months to make sure the mapping correlates with the nerve response levels. Apparently, after six months, the nerve response levels stabilizes and then they have a good idea as to where the nerves start responding to sound which will then indicate what the level of the sound should be.

All very technical, but most important, Juan is making progress, he’s crying when something is too loud– and that is very good! Jippieeee.

One could see the reaction better this time, and he closes his eyes, as if there is a noise in his head. Nicolize also explained the resistance came down which indicates that he has been wearing the gadget.

The practical side of the Nucleus 5 Cochlear System is not yet as good as it can be. They recommend that we stick the gadget on with wig tape— up and till now, we’ve shaved a bit of Juan’s hair and just took normal see through surgical plaster to tape the gadget to his head. It really drives me crazy when the gadget falls of every 5 seconds. As Juan is still sitting most of the time, the gadget does not stay on in the car chair, neither in the pram– this is very frustrating. What’s even worse is: once the entire gadget falls of- Juan fights us putting it on again- he hates it. We are quite lucky that his not pulling the gadget off all the time.

So as one can see, we have our little hurdles to overcome every day, but one cannot believe that a  human being is that adaptable – in less than a months time, we’ve managed to somehow live with this gadget as if that’s just how it should be.

Juan is exactly 10 months old today. I was stressing about: “How not to give a baby food for 10hours”, but that seem to be quite easy. I set my alarm clock for 22:00 last night, as a reminder to give Juan his last food before the operation. He drinks a bit, and then he just sleeps.

This morning I wake him at 5:30, and I’m all emotion, but he prefers to sleep. And he sleeps- during the entire drive to the hospital. He awakes at 6:30 whilst we are at the hospital reception. WOW! He’s so calm and playful, and that immediately makes it easy for all of us.

The anesthetist comes to do his check up— I’m scared Juan has started with a cold and the anesthetist says the operation can’t be done. But all clear and ready for the operation. Yeah!!  Just when Juan starts to get wriggly they give him medicine to make him sleep. He falls asleep just before 8:30 and at 8:30, Hennie accompanies  Juan as they push him into theater. And I cry, standing there alone in the hallway. Today Juan would be the first to receive the new Nucleus 5 Cochlear  System in South Africa.

We go and have breakfast. 3 hours later we stand ready to get Juan as he comes out of theater– but no Juan— the audiologist comes out, shows us the new Nucleus 5 Cochlear  System, and I just want to know where Juan is. The audiologist says: no that haven’t even started putting the Cochlear system in. And I must contain myself to not shout: But what have you been doing all this time!– I thought he is going to be out already!

Another 1.5 hours in theater and then there’s my little baby. Blue and crying none stop. Ice cold. 5 hours since I have last seen him. 4.5 hours in theater. Apparently he bled a lot, so it became a bit of a technical operation ( not as if it is not technical enough!!). But here he is, fine and crying. Bandages all around his ear. And beautiful to me. My baby.

Prof. Johannes Swart comes and checks on us and Juan. He must be the most stunning doctor I’ve ever met! So humble, so sincere, so absolutely amazing. He just lifts the standard of everything you can measure a doctor by, and we smile when we see him. He makes sure Juan is 100% fine before he goes. We take photo’s with him. For the moment, Prof. Swart is the man, and we cannot be more grateful for him. What an incredible man.

Hennie, my mother, mother in law and father in law are also present, we make turns to try and calm Juan down and warm him up, before his pain killers kicks in. He cries and cries, and falls asleep with the Nucleus 5 Cochlear system safe in his tiny head.  All of us happy.

Eventually he was born after a near full term pregnancy, but he weighed only 2.2kg at birth. Despite his age, he was a strong and healthy baby.

A MRI and CT scan of the brain is done as part of the screening for a cochlea implant. The scans revealed that Juan somehow did not get enough oxygen during this 8 weeks and as a result lost his hearing.

A couple of weeks later Tria realised that she was pregnant. She’ll take it from here…