Charles on… anything that comes along

If you haven’t been visiting Jason’s blog about his son Tom, well, you’ve been remiss. A stack of stuff has happened, including (and it made me blink some when I read it) a family-and-friends-funded second implant. (Note for those catching up: Tom was born with normal hearing but developed meningitis, which left him deaf - but otherwise OK - at about 18 months.)

It’s going OK, seems like, though the financial burden is pretty scary (if I’m reading it correctly), even with those helpful people.

Meanwhile, child3 is doing well with his single implant. Where are we, coming up for three months? He has what seems to us like lots of words: more, down, hot, meow (for any indication of a cat), baa (for any sign of a sheep), bye-bye (used when leaving anywhere, including a room or shop), and quite a few more I can’t think of just presently. (It’s Saturday evening, come on.) The interesting thing is that he accepts speech and sound as a means to get something done. When he’s had his supper, he wails; “do you want to get down?” my wife asks. “own”, he replies (pronounced like down, without the d; he’s not hot on initial letters yet, apart from ‘b’ and ‘m’). And he’s calm. It’s a big improvement over the normal 19-month-old tantrums you’d get otherwise.

In other medical news, Chris Gulker, who used to write a column for the Tech pages at the Independent - and it was always good because of his Silicon Valley perspective) - has discovered what’s been wrong with his left arm: he has a glioma in his right (brain) hemisphere. See the image on the linked page: that white thing ain’t meant to be there.

I said that his description of how they’re going to fix it somehow reminded me of…

which if you’re not getting it is Spock’s Brain, an episode from Star Trek. Read this page for the synopsis. Seen any mysterious women touching bands on their wrists lately, Chris?

Though Chris ain’t got the ears for it…

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• How to get bilateral cochlear implants for a child (it's not easy) (23 July 2006; score: 50.39%)
• Two ears better than one, especially for cochlear implant makers (25 September 2006; score: 49.69%)
• New battery, same old lifestyle (27 August 2006; score: 45.97%)