Oh, great... Lets just sue everyone!!
There was no harm done to this child, so why bring a lawsuit? It was aggravating to the parents of this child, but no real harm was done. I don't know what harm, if any, was done by wearing HAs for the last several months. But, really, is suing the medical profession the right thing to do when it was reasonable to believe the child had fluid in his ears? That does happen; especially if this baby was born by c section.
I'm NOT suggesting that this family didn't go through hell while this process played out, and I am glad they were tenacious and stuck to their guns when they thought they were right. I feel bad that they had to go through what they did, but to suggest a lawsuit is overreacting just a tad.
I appreciate your thoughts on this. I really do. But I have to respectfully disagree. Even if, hypothetically, no harm was done to my son's ears, there has been irreversible harm done to me in this whole process. My short-lived high of being happy that they were wrong is now slowly being replaced with denial and thinking that surely this cannot be correct either since they have told me for 8 months that my son had a permanent loss. I keep thinking that SURELY this is all some sort of dream or mistake, even though this is the exact thing I have been trying to prove for the last 8 months.
I have spent the last 8 months of his life obsessing over this, and I just wonder how old he would be before it was truly found out that it was indeed just fluid had I not been so persistent about everything.
These people treated me like I was absolutely crazy. Each time I saw his audiologist and would say something like "if he doesn't really have a hearing loss," she would look at me like I was crazy and tell me the same things over and over. "Mrs. Bedell...we did bone conduction on Grayson and it indicated a sensorineural loss for at least one ear." "Mrs. Bedell...his hearing has obviously progressed a little and that is why it is so different from the first ABR." Over...and over...and over.
I TOLD these people that my son could hear...I told these people that he responded to everything they said he could not...whispering, dogs barking, etc. I even recorded him responding to these things and brought my camera to her to show her, at which point she said, "Well, how far away from him were you when you whispered his name?" with a sort of attitude like I'm just a crazy person in denial.
I switched to my current audiologist because of a comment she made to me at my last appt with her in January. We, again, were on the subject of whether or not he really had a hearing loss because I just COULD NOT let it rest and get over it. She told me that if he were able to pass an OAE, then she may stop and say "hmm" and think something was up. I told her, "Um...he did pass one on his right ear the day before you did his ABR." She said she didn't remember that and fumbled through her papers. But she didn't remember because SHE didn't perform it. BUT...I had told her that from DAY ONE and mentioned it at EVERY...SINGLE...appointment. Because she had said that there was no way he could pass an OAE with his level of loss in his right ear. Had she paid attention to me and not just shrugged me off as a stupid parent in denial, she would have heard me at least once of the 20 times I must have said it to her. And the ENT who called upon her to do the test should have gone over that with her as well. I think they are both at fault.
There is so much more, but it has been more than just hell. It has been a complete nightmare. They ripped away my son's babyhood from me, because all I have been able to focus on is disproving them. If his tests had matched up or been consistent, I would have been at peace all this time knowing he had hearing loss and would have been okay. However, his tests have been extremely inconsistent, so I knew something was wrong, and it didn't match up with neuropathy.
I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours over the past 8 months researching different medical journals and articles and studies gathering information to argue with them about, and every time I would be shrugged off like I knew nothing.
It was not until I got this 3rd audiologist that someone started to listen to me. She has really been amazingly receptive at my ideas and theories the past few weeks. She has only been our audiologist for 3 weeks and was able to figure this out, so why not them??
This has drained me physically and mentally. After almost 9 months of talking to him without moving my lips to see if he would smile or respond, visits to our home from a parental adviser taking up OUR time talking about speech therapy, milestones, hearing aids, schools for the deaf, visits to specialists, almost losing my at-home job because I could barely work with all of the researching and extra time I have been having to take with Grayson, SEVERE strain on my marriage because I have been glued to my computer, neglecting my other children because I've had to put Grayson at the forefront...that is not worth anything? 9 months of keeping up with hearing aids, having to "disassemble" them every night, clean them, buy batteries, have near heart attacks whenever I saw him chewing on them (lol), etc. That's not worth anything?
If there was even a chance that he had fluid, it should have been suggested. It could have been cleared up many months ago. The ENT told me the other day that his tympanograms have been up and down over the past few months. WHY was that not brought to my attention, and why did a lightbulb not go off in their head?
Not only did my son have very strange, inconsistent testing, but he also had reverse-slope hearing loss, which should have thrown up another flag with the inconsistencies. And my son sees the best practice in Atlanta!
The ENT told me that tympanometry in small infants is not reliable, so WHY don't they just suggest tubes if there is even a possiblity of there being fluid? With inconsistent tests such as his?
If I sued, it wouldn't be for greed of money. It would be for the past 9 months of my life being completely turned upside down. I knew in my heart that my little boy did not have hearing loss, which is why I spent so much time and effort trying to disprove it. But I couldn't NOT put the HAs on, just in case he really did have a loss.
No one should have to go through this, and they need to learn to be more careful next time when there is inconsistent testing and not just chalk it up to the loss progressing, when there were other weird things going on like passing OAEs when neuropathy didn't fit as a diagnosis.
I was so depressed at one point thinking that I was crazy that I seriously contemplated suicide. Ultimately, I knew Grayson needed me. Glad I was able to overcome those feelings.