Camilla's story
Camilla was born on April 21st 1990, 6 weeks prior to term. She was our firstborn child and it was quite a shock to see this tiny baby placed in an incubator immediately after birth. Fortunately, Camilla was strong, and we could soon go home and enjoy and get used to our new life as a family.
I joined the group of new mothers arranged by our local health visitor. Camilla passed the compulsory Boel’s test twice, performed by two different health visitors on two different occasions and was used as the perfect example of baby babbling. Camilla started in a day care centre when she was 12 months old. She became quieter than before, but we thought that this was because of all the new impressions and all the children around her, so we did not find it alarming. She was always happy and smiling and an "easy" child, but she didn’t talk much. When talking to friends about Camilla and her speech development, they were all very friendly, telling us that their own children didn’t speak until they were two, three or four years of age. Since we didn’t want to seem hysterical we accepted these stories and took no further action.
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At the age of one year and eight months the nursery assistant asked us whether we had ever checked Camilla’s hearing. They had noticed that Camilla did not react when the door slammed behind her, or if someone called her name from a distance. At that second I KNEW something was wrong! Until then I had just refused to accept it. My first reaction was – I WILL CHECK IT TOMORROW! I felt like someone had just poured a bucket of ice-cold water over me – what now? We went to a specialist who checked Camilla for fluid in her middle ear. She had her adenoids removed and at the same time the surgeons checked if the bones in her ears were OK. Everything looked fine, so the only possible cause seemed to be a problem in the inner ear or the hearing centre in her brain. We will never know why Camilla has a hearing disability; we can only hope it is not hereditary. |
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After five months on the waiting list we arrived at the audiological department at our local hospital. Camilla was terrified! There were white coats and doctors everywhere! The hearing test took approx. 10 minutes, where the assistant tried to get Camilla to put a block on a stick when she heard a sound. SHE WAS TWO YEARS OLD AND SCARED TO DEATH! Of course they could not get a proper hearing test, and we were told to go home and come back one month later! At this point you just want to give up. You have this wonderful child for whom you would do anything, but you do not really know where to turn. We refused to let Camilla go through this again and sought other alternatives.
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Fortunately we had great support from the staff at the day-care centre, who allocated extra time for special support to Camilla. They told us about a special children’s centre, Børnekliniken. We went there and felt we were in the best of hands. AND, very importantly, there wasn’t a white coat in sight. Camilla joined an observation group for children with hearing difficulties. They performed hearing tests and IQ tests. They offered social counselling, explaining our rights and how the system works, and they offered courses in sign language for us, and also for Camilla’s grandparents and the staff at the day care centre. Due to this Camilla received her first hearing aids at the age of two and a half. |
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From that day on, Camilla wore her hearing aids from morning to evening and her language started developing. I attended courses in sign language and used the signs as support to explain differences between expressions and syllables, which sounded the same to Camilla.
At the age of four Camilla received a new pair of hearing aids – MultiFocus. Camilla was in the kitchen when I turned on the water – and she jumped one metre! This was one of many new sounds for her. Suddenly she could hear the birds singing, the ambulance siren at a distance and much more. Sometimes we forgot we had a daughter with a hearing disability – she was just as normal as her little sister.
One day Camilla asked, "Why did you choose to get a baby with hearing aids?" I told her, this was not a choice we made. She then asked me if she could climb back into my stomach and come out without them, and this made me cry.
Sometimes you need somebody else’s misfortune to put your own situation into a perspective. One of our friends gave birth to a boy who was blind. Suddenly, our problems seamed small and I felt ashamed for complaining.
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When the time came to choose a school for Camilla we couldn’t decide whether to send her to a public school or a special school for hearing disabled children (20kms away from home).We got 1000 different opinions, but the problem was that Camilla was somewhere in between two worlds – between the hearing and the deaf! We chose to let Camilla begin at the local public school at the age of six. We thought it would be best to be in a school close to home, with friends living nearby. We also thought it would be easier to move from a public school to a special class than the opposite, where the pace is slower. Fortunately we were right. Camilla is now in the 5th grade. She is at the top of her class in all subjects and she plays volleyball, badminton and has joined a theatre group. She is like any other girl – only different! |
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I still worry about her future though. I wonder:
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What will happen when she becomes a teenager
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Will her hearing loss stay stable?
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What will her boyfriends say?
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Will her girlfriends accept that she can’t whisper and gossip like everyone else??
I know all parents worry about their children and I am no exception. But sometimes I have to take a break and think about whether Camilla is the way she is and acts the way she does BECAUSE of her hearing problem, or if this would be her nature anyway.
I still feel bad when I get irritated when Camilla does not answer my call. I still get sad when I can’t whisper something in her ear when tucking her in at night. I still wish that she was just like everybody else.
But then again, a hearing loss isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Maybe Camilla is the attentive, considerate, caring person she is because of her situation. We have a happy, well-functioning, wonderful daughter, who is now on the verge of adulthood. We will continue to worry about her, just like we do about her sister, and we love her – just the way she is!!
Kaisa Terkildsen – Denmark
