Cochlear implant???

[hdirks]

Have any of you gone through this process? From you initial evaluation with the team how long did it take to actually get the surgery?

[2boyzmama]

No CI here, but just wanted to say hi again I know there is at least one active mom on here that has a daughter with a CI, she'll be by soon to share her experiences I'm sure.

Also, if you have any specific questions, my son's Infant Hearing Specialist has had lots of kiddos that have gotten CIs.

[hdirks]

Ci

thanks! We've gone through the basic steps. Our meeting with the team to discuss the surgery is on Tuesday. Just wondering how long the process takes to get it all approved through insurance and medicaid. We've waited so long already I'm excited to see what it will do for my baby!

[~cassie~]

We are a CI family

We saw our local Drs for ABRs and then saw an actual ENT that does CI surgery when he was 6 mths old for another ABR and a CT scan to tell us if the cochlea was in good shape to get the implant. We were told he was a candidate for it the same day.

Aidan has Medicaid and private insurance, Humana. We only had Medicaid at the time though and they only pay for 1 implant and the child has to be 12 mths of age. However, you can appeal that decision if your state is one that makes them be 12 mths before surgery by having the Dr send a letter outlining all of benefits of doing it earlier. Had I known this we would have gone this route but no one told me. Also your surgeon has to be willing to implant on a younger child. That is if your child isn't 12 mths old yet.

Aidan was required to have some vaccines before he could have surgery as well--had to have Hib, Pneumococcal, and something else but I am blanking on it.

I'm not sure how long it took to get it approved by Medicaid as we saw them at 6 mths and didn't see them again until surgery time, but our private insurance took about 1 mth to approve it.

Are you hoping to get both ears done? I wish we could have got our son's both done at age 1 b/c the 2nd implant made a huge difference for him. That was rather lengthy, more than you asked for, but I know Deaf/hard of hearing children are not as common as other special needs and it can be hard to find other parents that have been through the same thing. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have!

[~cassie~]

If you would like, you can visit Aidan's blog to see where he started and how he progressed with the implants.

http://aidanriley.blogspot.com/

Also, there is a yahoo group, www.cicircle.org that may be useful for you.

[hdirks]

Thanks so much for replying! We're in Iowa and we do have to wait until she's 12 months but she is currently 10 months now. Our audiologist told us that medicaid just passed something to where they will cover doing both of them at once and for how little my daughter can hear she would definitely qualify for both at once which is amazing! We're just excited to finally get the process started.

[~cassie~]

That's great she will be able to get both. They have been a godsend to our son and our family, it's amazing technology!