Shock and a little devastated at the moment...

I couldn't really compose an actual post with pictures today, but I wanted to post part of emails I sent to close friends and family yesterday when we learned of the magnitude of Matthew's hearing loss.

"Well, I went into Matthew's hearing test this morning as positive as I could. Matthew was up most of the night last night, so we were both exhausted but he still managed to be his happy little self on the way to the hospital. My stomach was a mess, but I was still hoping and praying for answers and a plan. Well, I got answers but they certainly ones that I was ready to hear. Matthew has profound hearing loss meaning he can pretty much not hear anything at this point. Deep down inside, I had a feeling that is what we were going to learn today but I was so yearning to hear that Matthew's hearing loss was caused by fluid and we could easily fix that....Instead I was in a room getting Matthew fitted for hearing aids after being told about the results of his almost 3 hour test this morning. They are going to try the hearing aids for a few months, but most likely he will need to have a cochlear transplant because his loss is so profound to have an attempt at hearing. Wow....all of my years of nursing and giving families devastating news didn't prepare me for coping with any of what I was told today. I was suddenly an emotional basket case feeling like my entire world was turned upside down. I was told I needed to apply for medical assistance for Matthew to help pay for costs of hearing aids, etc. I was given huge binders on parenting a deaf or hearing impaired child, and one on cochlear implants. I was told I would need to see ENT, have bloodwork and a CT scan for Matthew, he would need aggressive interventions started ASAP - and so much more. To say I was overwhelmed would be putting it mildly. And, then I had to call Chris and share this all with him....yikes. He was an amazing husband as usual, and I know after all we have been through together that we will get through thi s too, but wow - talk about overwhelmed! We do know that we love Matthew more than we could ever imagine but we are extremely overwhelmed and want to get him the help he needs!Iife is never easy, that is for sure and we know that we are feeling extremely weak at this moment, but we also know that there is always a reason for everything and that God knew Matthew needed us and we needed Matthew. Matthew will surely help us get through this, as he is just so resilient and I am thankful he is so young and we can get him the help he needs NOW so he can communicate with us and we can continue to meet his needs.
We promise we will only allow ourselves a short period of time to feel sad, overwhelmed, etc. but it can't last too long because we have a lot of things we need to do to get Matthew the help he needs! We DO feel like we've been thrown a huge curveball and but we know that we will work through it and be Matthew's best advocate but we surely need to grieve a bit first. The shock of all of this is tremendous. It will be about 2 weeks before Matthew's hearing aids come in - and then we will go from there.For those of you that haven't met Matthew yet, you are in for one big treat! He is going to be celebrating his first birthday with his forever family this week and will be turning 2!!! We were given the most amazing gift when we were given him, that's for sure!Hope you are all doing well!Much love,Melissa, Chris, and Matthew of course :)"