Doctors with a Hot Bedside Manner!

I'm dealing with two kids, my Dad and a husband in heat, while trying to build an empire. I'm a little overwhelmed, especially because I haven't been blogging. Blogging helps me maintain my sanity, what's left of it.

If I've been in limbo the past year and a half, now, I'm at the starting gate ready to bust out to take on the first lap (obviously I'd be running the Preakness). Waiting and waiting and waiting...the projects are lining up but they need to be organized and defined. In any case, I need to talk about two doctors: my pediatrician and my Cochlear Implant Surgeon.

When Ferdi gave me the opportunity to create a project for his association, I began surfing the internet regarding Newborn Hearing Screening and found a study in PEDIATRICS:
Primary Care Physicians' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Related to Newborn Hearing Screening
OI: 10.1542/peds.2006-1008
Pediatrics 2006;118;1357-1370
Mary Pat Moeller, Karl R. White and Lenore Shisler
that has an excellent questionnaire which evaluates the level of current knowledge of the Health Professionals working with our Deaf kids...and those to come.

I showed this questionnaire to Ferdi who was very interested in the idea and gave me the go ahead to proceed. Then, I showed it to my pediatrician who was Very enthusiastic about the idea, and who acknowledged that the knowledge level of issues in Deafness among pediatricians is lacking.

When I showed the questionnaire to my ci surgeon, he informed me that he had just had a book of guidelines for Newborn Hearing Screening in the region of Tuscany approved and that based on regional legislation, the Tuscan region mandated that all birthing hospitals had to perform the screening as of Oct. 2007.

Back to the pediatrician...
Dr. Giovanni Lenzi performed a sort of "preliminary investigation" as to exactly how many of the birthing hospitals regularly performed the Newborn Hearing Screening and found that some perform the entire screening process very well, some perform the screening process when "motivated," (puke),and some not at all.

Interesting.
The results of this little investigation apparently pissed off some people.
Niiiiiiiiiice.
One hospital coincidentally got their "broken" screening device "fixed" and began the screening process five days later.

I went to speak to my Cochlear Implant Surgeon, Professor Stefano Berrettini a few days ago. Now that is one dedicated surgeon, who has single-handedly created the NHS program for the region of Tuscany and who by chance would like to add the component of Parental Support to the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program that is in the initial phases of being actualized. He was also interested in the support of the Italian Federation of Pediatricians. Got that!

Do you know what he said to me?
He told me that he appreciated my professionalism, motivation and determination. He would like me to be a part of his team.
(You know he wanted to add that I'm a pain in the ass, but he is just way too nice:))

I think I might just be goin' back to college!
Look out!

THE LONG AND WINDING TUSCAN ROAD

No doubt the best gift I received this holiday season was my iPod, and I am now jamming and typing to the BEASTIE BOYZ. And then there was the worst gift: ANTI-AGING cream. Guess who gave me that one...yup, the mother-in-law. There is a universal sign for that one! Sheeeeit. Since my blog has been recently posted on deafread.com, I feel the need to give a little background on our situation here in Tuscany. For those who already know it, sleep.
I'm from Baltimore, met my husband 19 years ago when I was in high school and went to Grosseto on an exchange program. I stayed with an Italian family who spoke no English, smiled a helluva a lot for 17 days and spotted Luca in the Corso on day 7. Instant attraction - as much as you can have at age 17- so I asked one of the friends of the Italian students -who was that guy with the black leather jacket? The person I asked happened to be his brother, who introduced us and hasn't let poor Luca live it down ever since.
We went back and forth for seven years and managed to make it through college and careers. After one of our back and forth visits, I got pregnant. We got married and Jordan was born in Baltimore in 1996, there was no newborn screening in Maryland at that time. When Jordan was about six months old, we started complaining to our pediatrician at the time that for how alert he was, he was not producing any sounds. Our pediatrician blamed Jordan's lack of vocalization on the fact that Luca and I were a bilingual family - Luca spoke to Jordan in Italian and I spoke to him in English. Three months later, Luca returned to Italy and I stayed in Baltimore with Jordan to finish the school year, I was teaching fifth grade at the time. On June 16th, my family and I flew to Italy, they wanted to personally deliver us to our new home.
One month later I met our new pediatrician, Dr. Giovanni Lenzi, who I am in love with, really (aside from Josh Swiller and Patrick Dempsey). He did some standard one year check up testing on Jordan, was concerned with his lack of reaction to a hearing test - I'm talking not turning to the sound of a bell and began us on our journey. This journey took us to Florence and Drssa. Minna Bigozzi where they IMMEDIATELY fitted him for his first pair of earmolds and ordered his hearing aids. There was NO MENTION of incorporating sign language and I didn't speak a word of Italian at this point. Luca had to translate the entire conversation when I learned that my child was profoundly deaf. The drssa. insisted on speaking to my mother-in-law about MY SON, which really pissed me off, but she soon understood who she needed to talk to because every visit, I came armed with about thirty questions.
The Italian system kicked into action and we began speech therapy four times a week for thirty minutes each session. The National Health Care System PAID FOR EVERYTHING except for hearing aid batteries and they gave and give Jordan a monthly stipend of about 200 dollars that we put towards batteries and trips to Florence. So, while I felt lost and alone in a language and world that was not my own, I had something to work with and concentrate on...helping my child speak. Eleven years ago there were NO support groups, however I did have internet - something almost non existent in Italy 11 years ago and I found the John Tracy Clinic. The John Tracy Clinic helped me keep my sanity at that time filled with temper tantrums, language confusion, and total and complete lifestyle change. I threw up a wall in the face of family and friends because they asked a million questions that I didn't have the answers to and it was just too painful to explain the process of speech therapy and Jordan's stubborn and angry disposition. I understood everything he was going through because I was living a similar exhausting experience trying to learn Italian and communicate so that I appeared somewhat the intelligent person I was in the USA and was told I could ONLY speak Italian to Jordan.
We worked through eight years of anxiety, frustration, language barriers, homework, asthma, speech therapy, etc. and we are so unbelievably fortunate to have found competent and professional doctors, teachers, principals, support teachers, audiologists, psychiatrists (who I tended to RUN TO after every visit to Baltimore), friends and family. Tuscany is the perfect place to raise a child, there is no competition like there is in the US and when kids wreak havoc in a restaurant, the old people don't turn and say "Shut your kid up or leave him at home!" They smile and say what an adorable and vivacious child you have...music to my ears.
(Typing to Christina Aguilera now)As I blogged before, we decided for the cochlear implant when Jordan was eight...a psychologically trying decision, because I finally was forced to make a decision with regard to his deafness. He was born deaf. We wanted to give him the opportunity to choose in life for his future- whether to be part of a hearing world or a Deaf community. He had reached his limits with the hearing aids; my thoughts were that we had chosen this road, so we needed to travel it all the way to wherever it could lead. Really painful decision to operate my child.
Once again, we were blessed to have found a surgical/mapping team up to the task at Pisa's Santa Chiara Hospital. Professor Stefano Berrettini (who managed to perform the surgery and leave Jordan with the residual hearing he originally had in his left ear) and Drssa. Francesca Forli have done an amazing job answering questions truthfully, objectively and they have taken care of my son.
Jordan is eleven years old. Thanks to the cochlear implant - a WORLD of difference from the hearing aids - he is becoming bilingual - Italian-English (hopefully he'll learn ISL or ASL one day, I plan to if they ever offer a course in this town), he is learning to play the electric and acoustic guitar, plays baseball and mangaged to get a B on an Italian essay - miracles never cease here in this Tuscan town! (Ahhh, Maroon Five!)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN...PART TWO

OOOOOOOH! I mean BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Halloween just kept getting better and my husband, after carrying around the camera the entire Halloween party because I wanted pictures for my blog (what a man!)even downloaded some photos. I happen to have a double chin in all of them, so, sorry, you won't get to see me in my witch's costume! (Time-out to describe your basic American woman living in Tuscany nightmare...I have never, never seen as many stick-thin, beautiful, well-dressed women in one place in my entire life. Women wear make-up,heels and Prada to walk their dogs and to take their kids to the park. They stand in groups smoking cigarettes and every now and then glance over to make sure their kids are okay...which they are cause they're playing with the ball they stole from my kid...)I divert, back to Halloween...I dressed my kids up, as shown above, we went a little on the darker side this year. Basically, because I loved the hat I got for Jordan, paired it with a white somethin-somethin I found in a bag of play costumes my friend Susie gave me, and added a little green for the funky, zombie effect. I spray-painted his head black, why I don't know because he never took the hat off, and had a moment of crisis when I realized that the spray wasn't drying and he had to put his FREEDOM processor back on his head. So, after I washed down his left side and he put on the bte we were good to go...except Sofia was crying in the bathroom because she wasn't really accepting her new look of black, funky hair and green face. She calmed down when she asked her dad, "Babbo, would you still fall in love with me even with this hair (sounds more normal in Italian:))?" and Luca said, "Yes!" She then started laughing as only her dramatic, schizophrenic self can, and we happily left the house for the party.
The party was highly respectable this year, orange and black cobwebs, illuminated pumpkins, games, trick-or-treaters and this year, the majority of kids were actually in costumes with a couple of adults wearing Halloween-themed hats (my favorite was a ghost on the head made of some funky material resembling puffy styrofoam). 95% of the kids were in witch costumes, 4% were wearing the SCREAM mask (saw a cute deviation with a tongue sticking out of the mouth) and the remaining 1% was a ghost.
As you can see in the picture, Carnival was present...check out the confetti!:)

Oh, how I miss bobbing for apples and eating the marshmallow off the licorice string! (NOTE: there are no marshmallows in Tuscany :)) I also miss my mom's jar of Pond's Cold Cream, the only gunk that takes the junk off of sweaty, grungy, made-up Halloween faces. BTW, my shower has been slightly tinted black by three painted heads...And a good time was had by all...especially because the best part of Halloween in Italy is (drumroll please...)THE NEXT DAY IS A HOLIDAY BECAUSE HERE IN THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, TODAY IS SAINTS' DAY AND NO ONE GOES TO WORK...especially not my mother-in-law, so we shipped the happy kidlings to the mil and mom and dad hit the town for some pizza. We went to our old standby BIG PIZZA and you can imagine my surprise when I saw all of the patrons wearing witches' hats!!!! Every single customer in that restaurant had a pointed black hat on top of his-her head - sponsored by Heineken (so I had myself one) and suddenly I felt all warm and gushy inside...Halloween HAS finally Arrived!!!(PS. I cannot tell a lie, a couple of women wearing perfect make-up, heels and Dolce and Gabbana, who had apparently just been to the Beauty Shop DID NOT wear their witchy hats! But some serious progress is being made here in Tuscany!!)
PS. Go to my friend Val's blog, her kids Gage and Brook carved a jack-o-lantern with bilateral cis!! http://www.deafkidscanhear.blogspot.com/ (Yes, I know I'm still having computer difficulties...workin' on it)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! NOW YOU KNEW I WAS GOING TO POST SOME OLD HALLOWEEN PICTURES CAUSE BY THE TIME I DOWNLOAD THE ONES FROM THIS YEAR IT WILL BE NEXT HALLOWEEN! I love Halloween!!! It is by far my favorite holiday. Our first year living in Grosseto, I realized they didn't celebrate Halloween in Italy when I dressed up Jordan as a smurf and myself as a witch and people kept giving us rude stares. Did I care? Heck no! I just marched my little smurf around town and smiled at all the rude stares. My how things have changed...now it's Halloween night at the disco, kids have begun "trick-or-treating," and I just went dressed up as a witch to teach my pre-school class. When I arrived, I was shocked! There were jack-o-lanterns, electric pumpkins, black cats and hanging toilet paper ghosts. A couple of kids were even dressed up as a warlock, werewolf and ghost. Today we have a Halloween party in the town center where kids will be running around spraying shaving cream and silly spray because they just can't take the CARNIVAl out of Halloween, they have to mix it in there...I'm not complaining, cause in eleven years in Italy, we have made some serious progress! BOO!

Introducing......An American Mom in Tuscany and the Cochlear Implant

Hi Everyone!!!
I'm Jodi and this is my first official blog ever! I am the co-author of the children's book RALLY CAPS that was published in April 2007 (the other author is my dad). This book was inspired by my eleven year old son Jordan, who is deaf and wears a cochlear implant. I wanted to mainstream a strong deaf character in literature as my son is mainstreamed in public schools and life in general....IN GROSSETO! Grosseto is a town in Tuscany, Italy. I have chosen to write a blog because after so many years of teaching my deaf son to have a voice, I have neglected to use my own voice regarding how cochlear implants are changing lives. I feel extremely fortunate that my son is overcoming his disability and I would like all parents to know that the cochlear implant truly works.
To learn a little more about our story and to meet my incredible son (there is also a picture of my daughter Sofia) visit http://www.rallycaps.net/ciinfo.htm.
I look forward to writing and meeting new people curious about the cochlear implant and life in Tuscany.
Jodi
Co-Author of RALLY CAPS
Mamma of Jordan 11 years old (Nucleus 24C FREEDOM upgrade left ear) and
Sofia Madyson aka "DRAMA" 4 years old
http://www.rallycaps.net/