The Future of Cochlear Implants 3/12/2008
This is a very interesting article and helpful for those of you who still aren’t quite sure what a CI even is.
The deaf hear 9/15/2007
This video clip is really inspiring. I’d bet a large sum of money that the girl has a cochlear implant. I love her accent!
Jodi is fine and recovering 8/17/2007
Hi guys, Steve here.
The other day Jodi posted about her upcoming surgery, and I know that a number of you left comments or emails wishing her well, for which we’re grateful.
Jodi came though the surgery fine, though it was an hour longer than planned. The doctor removed the ovarian cyst, but also found that Jodi had stage 3 endometriosis and quite a bit of internal scarring (from the endo), so it took him some time to clean everything out. But the doctor seemed confident that he got everything and that Jodi will make a full recovery.
Thanks again for your prayers and support. I’m sure Jodi will post something in the next few days but I wanted to make sure that everyone had the good news.
Going under the knife 8/15/2007
That’s right. I’m having surgery tomorrow. The Dr. will be removing an ovarian cyst and cleaning up some suspected endometriosis. There is a rather interesting history to this whole endeavor. If you’re interested, read on.
In case it isn’t obvious, we have been unable to conceive any children for over 7.5 years now. We’ve had some possible explanations at times but nothing ever really convincing (or proven). We finally decided to adopt and were blessed with Adelina. Then, the completely unexpected happened: no, we didn’t get pregnant, though a gazillion people predicted that is what would happen. What happened is that Steve got laid off… again. Ok, not so exciting in and of itself, but within 2 weeks he had a new employer and soon we discovered something shocking: the new insurance covers infertility treatments with no limits given certain qualifications (oh yeah, we qualify). Honestly, when I first learned we had insurance coverage for treatments - even the big bucks ones - I didn’t even know what to do with it. I more or less pretended it didn’t happen. Eventually, though, I thought about it and we decided we should take advantage of it. I mean, why not? Isn’t this probably why God made it available to us?
Here is where it gets a little weird. So, we make the decision and choose an RE (that’s reproductive endocrinologist) and start the process. I think we last maybe 3 or 4 weeks before we both started having doubts and it was less than 6 weeks before we decided we didn’t want to pursue the fertility treatments. We really wanted to adopt again instead. We wanted to adopt another deaf child. So, that is what we are doing.
Unfortunately, the Dr. didn’t let me go so easily. He had identified the cyst way back in January and said we needed to watch it for a few cycles to see if it resolved itself. It didn’t, and he started talking about surgery. Initially I was unconvinced, but then he ran some blood work and it came back with a couple of markers showing “positive”. For what, you ask (as did I). The Dr. explained they indicate one of two things: either you have endometriosis, or you have a cancerous tumor. Ugh, I was starting to cheer on the endometriosis possibility. He consulted with a gynecological oncologist who reviewed my file and said I have less than a 10% chance of it being cancer. Hmm, so a 90% chance of endometriosis. That causes infertility, right? Hmmm…
So that’s the story. Tomorrow I go under the knife. And you’d better believe I’m praying it’s endometriosis and not the “C” word. Ironically, it isn’t even because I’m scared of cancer, but man that would put a huge kink in our adoption plans.
Read the next post for details on our adoption plans as they currently stand. It’s good, exciting news, folks!
