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Diagnosis as a babyHearing LossOur Stories

Noah

By December 22, 2021June 28th, 2022No Comments
Noah

January 2009

Noah was born on 30th January 2009 after a fairly unremarkable pregnancy and a fairly normal delivery (even with the cord round his neck!)

He failed his newborn hearing screening test but we and the examiner put it down to congestion and arranged a retest. Following two retests and still no response in his left ear, they referred us to the audiology department.

In the meantime when he was about 3 weeks old, I received a call from Kingston hospital informing us that they had discovered I had an infection in pregnancy and they needed to see if I had passed it to Noah. With much hilarity we finally captured a urine sample and rushed it to the hospital as they said we only had a small window in which to test for the virus.

But the laughter was initially short lived – a few days later I received a call to say that Noah had indeed contracted the virus but that he showed no signs of being affected and would probably be fine. I happened to mention the failed hearing tests and they put two and two together and called us in. It was Friday and we had to wait till the following week for our appointment – in the meantime we went online and read about what our future might hold. We spent a very tearful weekend reading about what Noah’s life might be like as a child with cCMV and we were devastated.

That all seems like a lifetime ago – following a meeting with Dr. Sue Luck Noah was admitted to Kingston Hospital and from the age of 4 weeks until 10 weeks old he received twice daily IV Gancyclovir.

He has regular check ups and all seems to be going well – his eyes are clear of CMV and, apart from an occasional bout of glue ear which causes new challenges, his hearing seems unchanged. Mostly it’s not getting in the way and he is developing very well. He started in Reception this year and for the most part is enjoying it. Unilateral hearing loss poses a few difficulties in a noisy open classroom setting but generally, his speech is good, he picking up reading faster than average and developmentally specialists feel he is ahead of the game so we keep our fingers crossed that the treatment worked.

Also, the febrile convulsions which he had fairly regularly from the age of about 18 months seem to have stopped. He was referred to a paediatric neurologist because of the link between CMV and epilepsy, and the fact that there is no history in our family so they are surprised that he’s had so many. But, Noah’s seizures always accompanied a fever so it appears to have just been a coincidence and they were just childhood febrile convulsions. He hasn’t had one for nearly 18 months now so we’re hopeful he has already grown out of them.
He is a happy, loving and enthusiastic little boy who is eager to learn so it seems we got off lightly in terms of CMV – we certainly will continue to hope so!